document license :abandoned

[rolandwalker]

This is styled as a PR, but intended for discussion.

Is license :abandoned useful?

• does it cover many Casks?
• can it be clearly and objectively defined?

If yes, we can document it, as it already exists. If no, we should delete it from the code.

The particular software I had in mind when adding this key was the font Code2000, and some related distributions by the same author. They were and are quite popular, originally distributed as shareware and betas. The author vanished completely. The Code2000 binary is currently distributed by the FreeBSD project.

The relevant Casks are listed as :unknown since this question is pending. I suppose, if :abandoned is rejected, these should be set to :closed (the most-specific license everyone can agree is true).

Refs #8084, #8017, #6426, #7917, #7923, #5586
cc @Amorymeltzer, @vitorgalvao, @ndr-qef

[Amorymeltzer]

#6567 is also pretty relevant here, in particular the confusion (below) over the potential definitions. (also the ancient #663)

In reverse order,

can it be clearly and objectively defined?

The definition proposed here is "a :commercial product that you can no longer buy", am I reading that correctly? In that case, is the cask even useful? What could a user do with it besides windowshop? Outdated is one thing but unavailable is another.

My gut definition of the word :abandoned is "not currently being developed but available somewhere", but that begins to stray a little from the purpose of the license stanza, no? Plenty of :oss and :closed software is :abandoned by that measure but still readily available if not being actively developed (with whatever original license still applicable). By this definition and from the previous discussion in #6567 I could see it being more productive as part of the tag stanza or even rolled into version or homepage somehow rather than masking legitimate licensing information. Right now this definition seems to be taken up by caveat which isn't horrendous, I guess.

There's a third definition, perhaps implied from the text in the PR, that the owner has given up ownership of it, for the interwebs to make use of, but again that seems to undermine the original intent of license information.

does it cover many Casks?

I won't be able to speak intelligently on this aspect, but my sense from perusing casks is not really. Again, that because I'm not sure it can be defined well or productively within the license context; taken outside that realm, though, a fair number of casks are indeed probably not under active development.

[vitorgalvao]

I agree with @Amorymeltzer. Particularly with taps such as caskroom/unofficial, caskroom/boneyard, and to a certain extent caskroom/versions (recent contributions by @bashu, like hyperspaces and mondomouse that work only in old versions of OS X and are, for all intents and purposed, abandoned and I believe won’t ever be touched¹), we don’t need that definition in license.

In that case, is the cask even useful? What could a user do with it besides windowshop? Outdated is one thing but unavailable is another.

Precisely.

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¹ Not at all a comment on your submissions, @bashu, that have been plentiful and welcome.

[rolandwalker]

The Nays have it. Closing and deleting.

Incidentally, yes, the abandoned Code2000 is entirely useful. Though it hopefully will be eclipsed now by Noto Sans.