>From time to time cases like the following are brought up to [email protected], for a package that is labelled with LICENSE="as-is":
| Permission to use, copy, modify and/or distribute this software in | both binary and source form, for non-commercial purposes, is hereby | granted [...] This is clearly not free/open-source software because of the non-commercial restriction. In my understanding, our "as-is" really is what opensource.org lists as "Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer" [1]. Obviously it's very permissive (comparable to MIT or BSD-2). It is also included in our @OSI-APPROVED license group. So, either we should only mark free software with the as-is label. Then it might help if the text was clarified as in the patch below. Or we continue marking random non-free stuff with as-is. Then we should IMHO remove as-is from our free license groups, create a licenses/HPND file (text as in [1]), and move the free packages to it. Currently, 679 packages have as-is in their LICENSE. Ulrich [1] <http://opensource.org/licenses/HPND> --- as-is 12 Jan 2012 19:03:23 -0000 1.3 +++ as-is 23 Sep 2012 09:43:19 -0000 @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ -This is a generic place holder for a class of licenses that boil down to do -no guarantees and all you get is what you have. The language is usually +This is a generic place holder for a class of licenses that allow you to +do most anything you want with the software. The language is usually similar to: Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its @@ -12,13 +12,11 @@ suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. - -You will need to check the license that came with the software for the exact -specifics. Generally you are free to do most anything you want with "as is" -software but you should not take this license as legal advice. +You will need to check the license that came with the software (usually as +permission notice in the source files themselves) for the exact wording. Note: Most all license have an "as is" clause. For our purposes this does -not make all software in this category. This category is for software with -very little restrictions. +not make all software in this category. This category is for software that +complies with the Open Source Definition and has very little restrictions. The information in this license about licenses is presented "as is". :-P
