Re: no one is asking for Perl to be GPL-only (was Re: licensing issues)

"Bradley M. Kuhn" <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>Ben Tilly <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Richard Stallman would *LOVE* it if Perl was placed under the GPL.
>
>I can't speak for RMS, but I know that the FSF would not necessarily "love"
>for Perl to be GPL'ed.
>
>The FSF surely wants Perl to be under a GPL compatible license (and,
>(GPL|SOMETHING) is always GPL-compatible, by default).  I don't think the
>FSF has ever expressed a desire that Perl be GPL-only.  In fact, the FSF 
>has
>a policy of encouraging everyone to always dual-licensing (GPL|Artistic) 
>for
>Perl modules, to encourage uniformity, and avoid licensing confusion for
>those who use lots of Perl modules.

Could you point me at this policy?  My understanding from
reading what Richard has written is that he would like it
if all software were GPLed and GPL only.  (In fact he does
not like LGPL to be used except where necessary.)

>(Indeed, it is quite unfortunate that there are so many modules on CPAN 
>that
>have chosen Artistic-only or GPL-only.)
>
>Of course, the FSF and many others would like to see the Artistic license
>clarified, so that it is definitely a free software license, and so that it
>is completely clear that businesses who want to redistribute Perl for 
>profit
>can do so unfettered.  I wrote an RFC to propose such corrections to the
>Artistic license.  We'll have to wait and see what Larry says about it.
>
Indeed the OSI would like it clarified as well partly
because it is widely used.  In fact item 1 of the OSD
(which you can find at http://www.opensource.org/osd.html)
was carefully written to avoid conflicting with item
5 of the Artistic License.  I have seen Bruce Perens
comment that it would be nice to tighten that item up.

That would not directly affect Perl because Perl would
still be free software under the OSD.  However there is
a real possibility of conflict for modules that are
Artistic only.  (Particuarly if Debian followed suit.)

Cheers,
Ben
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