Re: Guidance on the implications of the Lyon Amendment

On Tue, Jul 16, 2024 at 4:31 AM Russ Allbery <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
> I've started a few conversations in the past year about pushing forward
> the minimum Perl version of podlators, which is a "way upstream" package
> with lots of transitive dependencies.  In the v6.0.0 release, I pushed the
> minimum Perl version forward to 5.12.
>
> This broke a release process for brian d foy, resulting in the following
> issue:
>
>     https://github.com/rra/podlators/issues/35
>
> Some of this is my fault in ways that I can fix: I should have used an
> alpha version (weirdly enough, I have somehow managed to be a core
> maintainer for 25 years without using alpha versions, which is entirely on
> me and I need to start), and I should have gotten announcements into a few
> more places.
>
> Some of this may be my fault in ways that I'm not willing to fix, but I'm
> not sure.
>
> Some of it makes me wonder if I misunderstood the previous discussions and
> the implications of the Lyon Amendment for the usability of CPAN tools and
> for what prerequisites have to be met before bumping the minimum Perl
> version of way upstream packages to versions of Perl up to 5.16.  I feel
> like I'm hearing different things from different people, all of whom are
> far more plugged in to the community than I am.
>
> If folks would be willing to take a look at that issue, particularly folks
> who were involved in some of these previous discussions, and let me know
> if I have completely misunderstood or am barking up entirely the wrong
> tree, I would greatly appreciate it.
>
> Thank you!
>

It's a maximum minimum version. It allows one to require a newer version,
it doesn't require you to do so.

There's always a cost/benefit ratio to take into account, and IMO for old
modules it rarely makes sense to bump the required version. The benefits
are often dubious, and there's a real cost for downstream users. For newer
modules it often makes more sense.

Leon