On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 10:05 AM, Mike Gabriel
<mike.gabriel@das-netzwerkteam.de> wrote:
However, I would love Debian to give a signal on A-GPL as for many server-side projects (CMS, Groupware, etc.) A-GPL from my perspective definitely is the license to be preferred. However, this is mostly opinion and surely people can see that differently.
What sort of signal are you looking for?
We had the same request/issue with the Artistic License version 2.0 some months (years?) ago. Lots of new software (Perl 6 stuff specifically) uses it, and adoption is on the rise due to the clearer wording. It was clarified because of speculation that Artistic License 1.0 is not enforceable. Anyway, AL2 falls below the given threshold as well.
However, that is not to say that Debian main does not have plenty of AL2 packages. Just less than 1000 :-)
A license being in common-licenses is no indication as to whether it is preferred or not (after all GPL-1.0 is in there, and I hope that's not the *preferred* choice nowadays in light of the two subsequent versions). It's just convenient to save disk when there is a reasonably high probability that a user's system is going to install software licensed under those terms.
I would personally argue that not much disk space is used from inclusion to common-licenses (and that the used space is quickly recovered due to reduced duplication), though those wiser than me have reminded me that there are people who use Debian on platforms other than PCs that have essentially unlimited amounts of storage capacity, such as mobile devices in particular.
Cheers,
Jonathan