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

Chris Nandor <[email protected]> writes:

> I think it is unfortunate that anyone would think someone else's choice
> of license is unfortunate.  :)

While I'm with Linus on this (those who write the code get to choose the
license), I think it's incumbent on us, as the licensing working group, to
be aware that choices of licenses have consequences and sometimes those
consequences can be obscure or unintended.  I'd like it if everyone
choosing a license did so with full knowledge of the possible consequences
(and then, once they are, they should feel free to chose whatever license
they want).

Licensing a module solely under the Artistic License or solely under the
GPL has practical consequences.  It may be impossible to include that
module into Perl's core unless the license is changed (which can be
difficult).  The license may interfere with code from that module being
borrowed by other Perl programmers for other Perl projects if they want to
use the dual-licensing scheme themselves.  For some purposes, it would be
nice to be able to distribute CPAN or a subset of it under a single clear
license (although there's enough diversity now that this would require a
lot of work to do).

Sure, if people are aware of all of those issues and have decided that
their goals are more important to them than those drawbacks, more power to
them and they should be able to use whatever license they want.

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