Re: How to ask Upstream for clarification of "under the same terms as Perl itself" license

[Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>]

Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> writes:

> From the long -legal thread[1], many acknowledged this as a possible
> problem, and recommended where possible that upstreams be made aware of
> the flexibility of interpretation of the perl style copyright/licensing
> clause.

I'm one of the maintainers of the Perl documentation which recommends a
licensing clause.  That documentation currently reads:

   COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       For copyright

           Copyright YEAR(s) by YOUR NAME(s)

       (No, (C) is not needed.  No, "all rights reserved" is not needed.)

       For licensing the easiest way is to use the same licensing as Perl
       itself:

           This library is free software; you may redistribute it and/or
           modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

       This makes it easy for people to use your module with Perl.  Note
       that this licensing is neither an endorsement or a requirement, you
       are of course free to choose any licensing.

I apologize for not having time for reviewing a long thread right now, but
if someone can recommend alternate wording that would preserve the same
spirit but avoid the potential problems that you've seen, or alternately
something that I can add that explains those potential problems for module
authors, I'd be very happy to update this text.

Is the concern the lack of specificity about the version of Perl and
therefore the exact license referred to?

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>