appstream-util rejects MIT as a metdata license.

[aleixpol]

As can be seen here: https://github.com/flathub/org.qgis.qgis/issues/35 https://flathub.org/builds/#/builders/48/builds/812

This should work though, MIT it's even one of the suggested values in the documentation: https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/chap-Metadata.html

[hughsie]

@ximion added the MIT licence as acceptable in the specification, but I never agreed the MIT license with the Red Hat lawyers, we only agreed on the subset that appstream-glib supports. I can chase them, but legal stuff takes time.

[ximion]

Jup, I told @aleixpol that story already. The problem is that the specification from the very start mentioned "user permissive licenses" implying that all permissive licenses are acceptable, while also listing a bunch as examples, including MIT. I never didn't know that appstream-glib was restricting the list for a really long time, and I am very reluctant to remove a licenses that appstream accepted since forever from the supported set.

[hughsie]

Also, a question from RH legal: "Which MIT license" -- looking at https://spdx.org/licenses/ there are a few to choose from...

[ximion]

Since the identifier that is checked for is MIT, it's https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT.html and maybe also https://spdx.org/licenses/MIT-0.html (if the former is good, the latter must from my perspective be fine as well).

[hughsie]

So the proposal to legal would be both MIT and MIT-0 as well?

[ximion]

Yes, I think that's sensible - if MIT is permitted, people may want the no-attribution MIT-0 as well, and since that one's basically MIT with one restriction removed, it should also work for metadata collections if the MIT license itself is considered to be fine for that purpose.

[ximion]

@hughsie From looking at the patch above, it looks like libappstream also accepts BSL-1.0 as valid. I think that's fair game as the Boost License is basically a "public domain" license for countries which don't have the concept of public domain, and by its text is more permissive than BSD and MIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boost_(C%2B%2B_libraries)#License But tbh I completely forgot that that license was also permitted...

[scx]

See also: https://github.com/flathub/org.freedesktop.appstream-glib/issues/6#issuecomment-532904944