Bug#458385: New version of Artistic License
Allison Randal <allison@perl.org> writes:
> Perl 6 is already distributed under version 2.0, currently included in
> the Parrot package. As are over a hundred Perl 6 modules, currently
> included in the Pugs package. We haven't split them out into separate
> Debian packages yet, but will in the next 6 months or so.
That's additional information that I didn't have. Are all hundred of
those modules covered under the Artistic 2.0 license?
I was under the impression that the Perl 6 modules in the archive were
being packaged independently like the Perl 5 modules, since I think I've
seen several of them already. I didn't realize that you had a monolithic
package that you were going to break up.
> Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Perl 5 can never legally be released under this license so far as I can
>> see. The Perl maintainers didn't do copyright assignment, so
>> relicensing the existing Perl code base would require contacting every
>> contributor and obtaining their permission to relicense their code.
>> This isn't really feasible.
> Version 2.0 of the license was intentionally drafted so it's entirely
> compatible with version 1.0 of the license. It has the same terms, only
> cleaner and more legally precise. It's a drop-in replacement, and
> copyright assignments aren't necessary.
Hm. I think you're going out on a considerable legal limb here, but
presumably you've talked to a lawyer and have gotten a firm legal opinion
before taking this step. I'm not a lawyer, so I won't question legal
judgement, and the wording of the Artistic License is odd enough that this
may be possible. However, in general, relicensing requires assignment or
consent, so if you *haven't* gotten a specific legal opinion on exactly
this question, I strongly recommend doing so before relicensing just to
avoid unfortunate problems.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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