Bug#950678: licensecheck: misdetect BSD license (quote issue ?)

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Dominique,

Quoting Dominique Dumont (2020-02-04 18:16:47)
> The file stdint-msvc2008.h [1] from libuv1 package is reported by 
> licensecheck as:
> 
> $ licensecheck --copyright include/uv/stdint-msvc2008.h
> include/uv/stdint-msvc2008.h: BSD 2-clause "Simplified" License BSD (unspecified)
>   [Copyright: 2006-2008 Alexander Chemeris]
> 
> Unfortunately, the header of this file [1] is a BSD-3-Clause license.
> 
> I guess that licensecheck is tripped by the quotes around "AS IS"
> which are actually a mashup of back-quotes and quotes: ``AS IS''
> 
> I've looked at regexp-pattern-license code, and it looks like OPenSSL
> can cope with backquote and quotes. BUt I don't know how to apply this
> to BSD regexp.
> 
> Could you fix this issue ?

Thanks for an interesting case - albeit differently from what you 
highlighted...

I believe Licensecheck correctly detects the oddly quoted ``AS IS'' 
(which amusingly enough stems from cp1252 documents wrongly parsed as 
ISO-8858-1 and then choking when later parsed as UTF-8 (or something 
along those lines): Licensecheck should look for "0-2 non-spaces, then 
AS or as, then dash-or-space, then IS or is, then 0-2 non-spaces".

What I think is instead the interesting thing here is the licensing 
clause itself: Third clause of BSD-3-Clause is commonly referred to as 
the non-endorsement clause, and speaks in negatives:

> Neither the name of the <organization> nor the names of its 
> contributors may [...]

Now, the licensing terms in stdint-msvc2008.h sort-of omits the 
organisation part, but really no - it drops the negations and becomes an 
endorsement _permission_ which is really a non-clause.

Do you agree with my interpretation?


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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