Re: Perl module licenses (was Re: libxml-filter-sax1tosax2-perl_0.03-1_i386.changes REJECTED)
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Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org> writes:
> in context it's already clear and exactly what they want to say.
I think you're being generous in claiming that it's exactly they want
to say: as you pointed out it's extraordinarily common and I think a
large number of modules authors will do it because "that's what
everyone else does" (much in the same way that a fair amount of code
ends up under the GPL despite the author not really understanding what
that means).
I don't think it's at all clear (what's "perl" in context of the
license? what happens if perl (the real thing) is released under a
new license?) and we wouldn't accept such an equivocal license in any
other context, so I don't see why we should special-case perl modules.
> If referring to /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright isn't kosher then I
> think we should just copy the licensing fragment from that file into
> the copyright files that need it.
That would at least give us less grounds on which to reject packages
like this, but, personally, I do think there's a problem with this
kind of "license" and (day-dreamingly) wish people weren't quite so
keen to ostrich about it just because it affects a large number of
packages :(
--
James
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