Re: Thoughts on Kik and NPM and implications for CPAN

Related to this perhaps was the Ion3 debacle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_%28window_manager%29#Controversy

Long story short: Ion3 developer did not want a certain feature.
Debian added a patch for it. He got mad, pulled Ion3 out. Same with
ArchLinux, NetBSD, and FreeBSD.



On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Stefan Seifert <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 March 2016 11:07:34 David Golden wrote:
>
>> * I think we have to allow mass deletion, even if that de-indexes stuff.  I
>> think that's an author's right.
>
> I've never gotten that argument. The code in question is usually under a very
> permissive license. Publishing code under such a license is a very conscious
> decision of the author. People trust the author and build on this foundation.
> Among those people are the ones that run CPAN and its mirrors. They too are
> only allowed to distribute the code because the license says so. When people
> download distros from CPAN they do so as sub licensees of whoever runs their
> favorite CPAN mirror.
>
> Now if the original author decides to no longer publish her code, that's
> absolutely fine. I just don't get why CPAN should follow suite and do the
> same. We don't demand this of BackPAN and we don't demand the same from other
> users who trusted the license. Why is CPAN literally the only entity that
> should go beyond the license and do the author's bidding? Considering that
> copyright exists solely to benefit the public, I have to ask: how is the
> public served by this self censorship?
>
> Stefan