Re: perl modules' default licence

[Nicholas Clark <nick@ccl4.org>]

Oops. I should have said "I'm not subscribed, please CC me". I've subscribed
now, and hope that I've not mangled things from the web archive that badly.

Jakob Bohm <jbj@image.dk>:
> On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 01:33:44PM +0100, Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS wrote:
> > Jakob Bohm <jbj@image.dk>:
> >
> > >    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.

Auto-generating the version number in this fashion at the time of initial
module creation is easily do-able.

> > The GPL refers to the GPL "as published by the Free Software
> > Foundation", but you're not saying here what counts as a version of
> > Perl. For example, if someone creates a public-domain implementation
> > of some extended subset of Perl, is that sufficient to make the
> > modules public-domain?
> >
> 
> Oops, that should be there too, the trouble is to formally
> denote the proper organization, given that:
> 
> The organization surrounding Standard Perl has changed in the
> past, and may change again.  Perl 5 is copyright Larry Wall,
> Perl 6 is in development and copyright The Perl Foundation.
> 
> Larry Wall is a human being and will probably die before the
> copyright on new modules expire.
> 
> The Perl Foundation is a unit of YAS, not a separate entity.
> 
> Demanding that the Perl version in question be derived from
> Standard Perl would appear a good choice, except that perl6 will
> apparently be a ground-up rewrite, at may not call its release
> "Standard Perl".

You're correct - perl6 is a ground up re-write. The copyright is assigned
to TPF rather than Larry Wall, but with the same licensing as Perl 5
(dual Artistic/GPL). I agree that with this it means that it's not possible
to canonically say who is the official Perl 6, particularly if someone
forks it, and hence who determines the "later version" of the licence.

Would it be easier to only specify "later" in terms of Perl 5?
(given that Perl 5 licensing is determined by Larry Wall, who is
unambiguously identifiable as the "official" source)

So:

    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 of Perl 5
    you may have available.


I'm only asking about the default text in new modules - any author who
wants to change this to encompass Perl 6 is free to do so. We only need
to nail down "official" Perl 6 for the purposes of "later version" by
the time Perl 6 comes out, rather than now.

Nicholas Clark