Licenses on CPAN

(This is a carryover from the p5p list.)

I do not think we should encourage ANY specific licensing terms for CPAN
content, except that it should be an open source license of some kind.

Bradley Kuhn wrote:
>However, the Artistic license isn't legally sound enough to hold water
>as a free software license by itself.  Larry even noted that it isn't
>intended for use on its own.

I disagree entirely.  First, I don't think there is such a thing as legally
holding water as a free software license.  :-)  It seems to me that assumes
there is a such a legally defined thing as a free software license.  I am
not sure what that statement even means.  Does it mean that it does not
allow people to use the software?  If that is what you mean, I disagree.
If you mean something else, well, then I don't think it matters.

As to picking another license, like the MIT: I honestly don't care.  I am
not here to say the AL should be the license of choice.  I am here to say
it is acceptable.  However, I like the AL and will stick with it (though I
wouldn't mind minor changes to it for clarifications).


One more thing, Bradley Kuhn wrote this:
>Yet, we have documentation in the core and software on CPAN that is
>Artistic-only, and thus isn't known to be free documentation/free
>software.

That is patently false.  Even Bruce Perens says that AL-licensed software
is open source (though with heavy reservations, of course).  Everything I
write on my own is AL-only, and is free software, in every definition of
the phrase, including RMS' definitions.

-- 
Chris Nandor                      [email protected]    http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network    [email protected]     http://osdn.com/