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

At 19.55 -0800 01.14.2001, Russ Allbery wrote:
>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).

Agreed.


>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).

I don't know what has come of it, but there was a big discussion about
changes to CPAN, including metadata about the modules, and if that ever
happens/catches on, you just have a place in the metadata for what
license(s) are used.


>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.

Yes; it is this situation with every licensing scheme that we've ever seen.
There are goals, there are drawbacks, and there are decisions.  Informed
decisions are always best.

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