Quoting Philippe Ombredanne (2022-05-02 13:43:56)

On Mon, May 2, 2022 at 10:46 AM Till Jaeger via lists.spdx.org
<jaeger=jbb.de@...> wrote:

I noticed that NPM is using an Artistic-2.0 with additional terms
and conditions:

This is IMHO a total and complete mess and non-sense, eventually non
FOSS at all.
Anyone from Microsoft or GitHub to fix this monstrosity?

Release notes for npm v2.14.13 contains the following:

npm-the-CLI is licensed under the terms of the [Artistic License
2.0](https://github.com/npm/npm/blob/8d79c1a39dae908f27eaa37ff6b23515d505ef29/LICENSE),
which is a liberal open-source license that allows you to take this
code and do pretty much whatever you like with it (that is, of course,
not legal language, and if you're doing anything with npm that leaves
you in doubt about your legal rights, please seek the review of
qualified counsel, which is to say, not members of the CLI team, none
of whom have passed the bar, to my knowledge). At the same time the
primary registry the CLI uses when looking up and downloading packages
is a commercial service run by npm, Inc., and it has its own [Terms of
Use](https://www.npmjs.com/policies/terms).

So seems to me (assuming licensing hasn't changed since v2.14.13) the
command-line tool *is* freely licensed, and only when describing
npm-as-a-whole-including-online-service is it not free.


- Jonas

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

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