Add small BSD variant for gnu-efi

[pombredanne]

reported by @lzcunt in:

• https://github.com/aboutcode-org/scancode-toolkit/pull/4186/files
• gnu-efi: 3.0.18 -> 4.0.0, adopt, modernise; gnu-efi_3: init at 3.0.19 NixOS/nixpkgs#388761

We should consider adding this as a new license OR treat that as a rule.
Note the trailing notice:

THE EFI SPECIFICATION AND ALL OTHER INFORMATION
ON THIS WEB SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND ARE SUBJECT
TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

• https://github.com/ncroxon/gnu-efi/blob/master/licenses/LICENSE.efilib

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted
provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and
the following disclaimer.

Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions
and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
distribution.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL INTEL BE
LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE
POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. THE EFI SPECIFICATION AND ALL OTHER INFORMATION
ON THIS WEB SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND ARE SUBJECT
TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

[mintsuki]

IANAL but isn't this literally just BSD-2-Clause? The extra text at the bottom not only comes entirely after the text of the vanilla BSD-2-Clause license, but it is part of the disclaimers block of text and is an extra disclaimer that doesn't really affect any code shipped with this license as the "EFI specification" is an extraneous body of work and the "web site" is unspecified and it could very well be taken to refer to the website hosting the code using this license, and even if it did affect the code, again, it is just an extra no-liability disclaimer.

[pombredanne]

@mintsuki in general yes, the terms are the same, and it comes after the main disclaimer but is undistinguisahble from the rest of the all caps disclaimer and therefore looks like being part of it, and the license has few requirements beyond retaining "the following disclaimer"?

@jkmarz Hey 👋 you may be able to help?
The license above is for code from Intel that was downloaded and furthered in this projects

• Initial project https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnu-efi/
• New @ncroxon project https://github.com/ncroxon/gnu-efi/

It is kinda unique because of extra line in the disclaimer.

The code came from Intel's https://web.archive.org/web/20081011204745/http://developer.intel.com/technology/efi/toolkit_agree.htm which is no longer up and no longer supported. The code likely comes from https://web.archive.org/web/20111223101126/http://download.intel.com/technology/efi/docs/EFI_Toolkit_1.10.14.62.zip or a similar version.

@jkmarz The ask: to make it simpler to package in Nix, would it be possible to drop the last sentence of the disclaimer so a plain BSD-2-Clause could be considered instead?

THE EFI SPECIFICATION AND ALL OTHER INFORMATION
ON THIS WEB SITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH NO WARRANTIES, AND ARE SUBJECT
TO CHANGE WITHOUT NOTICE.

Thanks!

[jkmarz]

Hi @pombredanne I'll investigate and get back to you.

[lzcunt]

@ jkmarz The ask: to make it simpler to package in Nix, would it be possible to drop the last sentence of the disclaimer so a plain BSD-2-Clause could be considered instead?

I've decided to consider it as plain BSD-2-Clause (just like it currently is in Fedora's and other distributions' packages) so this is not necessarily needed for nixpkgs, however I'll update it accordingly if it can't be considered as plain BSD-2-Clause. I think it's pretty safe to consider it BSD-2-Clause since all other distributions (including ones like Fedora, for which Red Hat has full time employee/s for license identifiers) have been doing that since the dawn of time.

Side note: It'd be awesome if we could remove the reference to BSD-2-Clause in BSD-no-disclaimer-unmodified since it is NOT a variant of BSD-2-Clause. This does affect packaging more severely, and since the LicenseRef-scancode- identifier can't be renamed, I'm dropping the identifier from my nixpkgs PR (which is how it's usually done anyways so this is fine).

[pombredanne]

@xsuchy Hey :) ping on this since you recently worked on it for Fedora https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/gnu-efi/blame/gnu-efi.spec?identifier=rawhide#_9

[xsuchy]

I likely missed this trailing of the license.
My recommendation is to treat the last lines as an exception and submit it to SPDX and ask for ID. We will see if this will be evaluated exception or the whole license as a new license.

[mintsuki]

@xsuchy could this also be done for the aforementioned license mistaken as BSD-2-Clause and/or BSD Axis Unmod? That is also extensively used throughout gnu-efi and Nyu-EFI...

[pombredanne]

@xsuchy could this also be done for the aforementioned license mistaken as BSD-2-Clause and/or BSD Axis Unmod? That is also extensively used throughout gnu-efi and Nyu-EFI...

@mintsuki can you point to one of these examples? It may just be a detection issue in ScanCode.