Colin Watson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 07:56:37PM +0000, James Troup wrote: > > Colin Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > in context it's already clear and exactly what they want to say. > > > > I think you're being generous in claiming that it's exactly they want > > to say: as you pointed out it's extraordinarily common and I think a > > large number of modules authors will do it because "that's what > > everyone else does" (much in the same way that a fair amount of code > > ends up under the GPL despite the author not really understanding what > > that means). > > > > I don't think it's at all clear (what's "perl" in context of the > > license? what happens if perl (the real thing) is released under a > > new license?) and we wouldn't accept such an equivocal license in any > > other context, so I don't see why we should special-case perl modules. > > I've always thought it amounts to delegating licensing to the perl > maintainers, and that it's actually desired that a changed perl licence > should apply (perl6 will be under GPL / Clarified Artistic Licence, > AIUI). Still, I can see there's clear room for contention and ambiguity. > > Somebody with a firm grasp of the legalities and exactly why that kind > of delegated licensing is a bad idea should probably put together a mail > to, um, somewhere like [EMAIL PROTECTED] or maybe even > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (since e.g. perlmodlib(1) and pod2man(1) > explicitly suggest the "Perl itself" style, saying things like "This > makes it easy for people to use your module with Perl"). Contacting > upstream authors one by one isn't likely to be terribly useful without > getting general agreement from the Perl community that the idiom should > be changed. > > > > If referring to /usr/share/doc/perl/copyright isn't kosher then I > > > think we should just copy the licensing fragment from that file into > > > the copyright files that need it. > > > > That would at least give us less grounds on which to reject packages > > like this, but, personally, I do think there's a problem with this > > kind of "license" and (day-dreamingly) wish people weren't quite so > > keen to ostrich about it just because it affects a large number of > > packages :( > > Those certainly aren't my grounds for thinking it isn't a problem, but > my legal knowledge is weak, so I'll defer ...
Ok, but what do we do in the meantime. I've got a couple of new Perl packages I would like to upload (e.g. the new version of XML::LibXML needs XML::LibXML::Common). If they are rejected because of this license issue I'm basically stuck. Thanks, Ardo -- Ardo van Rangelrooij home email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] home page: http://people.debian.org/~ardo GnuPG fp: 3B 1F 21 72 00 5C 3A 73 7F 72 DF D9 90 78 47 F9 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
