Re: licensing issues

John van V <[email protected]> writes:
> [someone else]

>> Also, note that if we use a modified version of the GPL, it will likely
>> be incompatible with the real GPL, which will cause big licensing
>> problems.

> In a compomise, everybody gives a little, otherwise everybody suffers;

The dual license is already such a compromise.  What's wrong with the dual
licensing scheme?  Why do you think the GPL has to be changed as part of
Perl's licensing when we have a dual license?

> Perl and GNU have exactly the same goals but are seperated by split
> hairs.

Well, this obviously isn't true in general since Perl is a project to
create a programming language and GNU is a project to create an operating
system.

If you meant that the people working on the Perl project and the people
working on the GNU project have the same licensing goals, your statement
is still unclear since the GNU project is huge and intentionally pulls in
large pieces from various places.  Perl is *part* of the GNU project in
that sense; so is X, TeX, and any number of other pieces of software that
aren't even under the GPL.

What I think you were trying to say here is that the people working on
Perl and the FSF (which is a different entity than the GNU project) have
the same licensing goals.  I don't think this is at all true.  Most people
working on Perl seem to be at least reasonably content with Perl being
used for proprietary projects if people wish to, are interested in finding
ways for proprietary software companies to work more closely with the Perl
community and to be able to write Perl modules and the like, and otherwise
are not particularly strongly behind the idea that all software should be
free.  There are exceptions, of course (it's a large community), but the
FSF has a much clearer political goal.  Perl doesn't really have as much
in the way of political goals.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email protected])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>