RE: RFC idea

At 10:45 -0500 2000.09.25, David Grove wrote:
>expensive on the market. This restriction of redistribution of the perl core
>binary _is_ taking advantage of the situations and licenses unfairly and

There is no such restriction.  Nowhere is the perl binary for any specific
platform restricted.  On the CPAN ports list there are several different
Win32 binaries, and some of them have no additional restrictions.  And if
you can't find one you like, then you, having a compiler, can build your
own and distribute it.


>I have a compiler. I have several. I don't use company X's distribution. I
>don't have to. I do very well from source. However, I'm not the average Win32
>user. The average Win32 user depends on binaries. I do however depend on
>source
And there are several non-ActiveState binary distributions out there for
them to use.  And if there weren't, someone else could build them and
distribute them.


>However, it should be clear that if company X wants to distribute a binary
>compile and limit its redistribution contrary to the concept of free software,
>solely to become the "one and only" source for Perl on Win32, that's not a
>good
>thing.

So a potential license should take into account the motive of the user?  I
can say with certainty that whatever distribution practices ActiveState
engages in, they are not "solely" anything.  Many factors are involved.
Even if a company had that as its sole motivation, there's no way you could
know that.  Including it in the license makes no sense.


>Again, we have an opportunity to correct a loophole that has allowed this
>problem to exist.

... assuming there is a problem (and I disagree that there is).  I think
this "loophole" has not hurt anyone and has helped a lot of people who
could not or would not have used perl otherwise.

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