[osgeo4w-dev] curl incorrectly flagged as non-open-source in OSGeo4W installer

[Tobias Wendorff]

Dear OSGeo4W team,

while installing QGIS via the OSGeo4W installer, I noticed that the 
package "curl" is now prompting users for explicit consent due to 
supposedly restrictive license terms. The package appears to be tagged 
as non-open-source, which is incorrect.

curl is open source in every meaningful sense. Its license is 
functionally almost identical to the MIT or BSD licenses - permissive, 
attribution-based, and widely accepted. The likely source of confusion 
is that the SPDX identifier "curl" (used for curl's specific license 
variant) is not explicitly listed as an approved license by the Open 
Source Initiative (OSI). However, this is a gap in OSI's list, not a 
reflection of curl's actual licensing terms.

For reference, the curl project's copyright and license information is 
documented here: https://curl.se/docs/copyright.html

The lead developer of curl is very approachable and responsive - he can 
be reached via IRC, among other channels, if clarification is needed 
directly from the source.

I would suggest reviewing the license classification logic in the 
installer and correcting the tag for the curl package accordingly.

Thank you for your time and for maintaining OSGeo4W!

Best regards
Tobias