Re: perl modules' default licence
On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 05:44:19PM +0200, Dagfinn Ilmari Mannsåker wrote:
> Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org> writes:
>
> > I sometimes read in Debian Weekly News about discussions on debian-legal
> > about problems with packaging perl modules for Debian because of the
> > vagueness of the licensing terms they use. My understanding is that the
> > phrase that causes problems is:
> >
> > This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
> > it under the same terms as Perl itself.
>
> The vaugeness stems from not specifying which Perl version's terms that
> apply, which causes problems when/if Perl changes its license terms (as
> happened when the Artistic Licene was added as an option to the GPL in
> Perl version 4).
>
> > Could debian-legal suggest a better phrasing for that default licence line
>
> I use the following statement for the perl modules I package (after
> having received clarification from upstream):
>
> This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
> it under the same terms as Perl itself, either:
>
> a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
> Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
> later version, or
>
> b) the "Artistic License" which comes with Perl.
>
Sorry, but this license is *more* restrictive than the old one
apparently intends to be.
The short standard license indicates that if, for any reason,
the perl community decides to change to a new licensing regime
(e.g. "the GNU General Public License, with added permission not
to comply with the Affero Bit"), modules under the old two-line
phrase would follow without a very difficult need to
individually contact each and every CPAN contributor for a
formal permission.
Said another way, I read the old license as delegating the
decision to the primary maintainers of Perl itself, while your
sample delegates only to the FSF.
How about
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. Either Perl
version 5.8.3 or, at your option, any later version you may
have available.
Ideally, the number 5.8.3 would be set at template generation
time based on the running perl version on the original authors
machine (not some later packagers or modifiers machine) e.g.
"version ".sprintf('%vd',$^V)." or, at your..."
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