Debian-Policy: I suggested that the Perl license be added to common-licenses. Santiago Vila, the base-files maintainer, pointed out that the debian-policy list members make this decision. So I'm floating the idea for discussion here. On Tue, Jan 08, 2008 at 12:18:09PM +0100, Santiago Vila wrote: > On Sun, 6 Jan 2008, Steve M. Robbins wrote: > > > Package: base-files > > Version: 4.0.2 > > Severity: wishlist > > > > Hi, > > > > CPAN ships an enormous number of perl modules, many of which > > have a license similar to the following: > > > > This package is free software; you can redistribute it and/or > > modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. > > > > It would be helpful, then, to just point to a common-licenses file. > > > > As it stands now, each package is obliged to copy the Perl license: > > > > This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify > > it under the terms of 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. > > > > [/usr/share/doc/perl/copyright] > > > > into its own copyright. Many choose instead to paraphrase, sometimes > > omitting information. For example, libcgi-session-perl omits mention > > of the GPL option: > > > > This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or > > modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. > > > > Larry Wall's "Artistic License" for perl can be found in > > /usr/share/common-licenses/Artistic. > > > > [/usr/share/doc/libcgi-session-perl/copyright] > > > > A common-licenses file will alleviate these kind of copying > > errors. > > I don't think we need new files in common-licenses, as we already have > the Artistic License and the GPL there. IMHO, common-licenses should > be for proper license texts, not for "license blurbs". I don't see what is the distinction you're drawing. The Perl license is the license for Perl; it is therefore a "proper" license. Yes, it is shorter than the two licenses it references; but surely that's not the criterion for selecting common licenses? The main benefit of including a license in common-licenses is labelling. I only have to read the license text once, remember its label, and afterwards I can understand the license of a package that says "... under the terms of GPL-2". I don't have to read the entire license text to see if it is similar to the GPL-2 license, but subtly altered in one of the clauses. And I don't have to worry about copying errors, as described above. (Is it a copy error or a deliberate change?) That is, of course, only a benefit if there are a significant number of packages sharing a given license. Given the size of CPAN, and the number of perl modules already packaged that share the license of Perl, I think that threshold is reached. Your thoughts appreciated. -Steve
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