Hi Ashley!
Ashley Pond V wrote:
Dave Rolsky wrote:
I don't know the exact rules of CPAN regarding non-free licenses, so
I'm not sure if this should be pulled. Unlike the Bantown license, it
probably doesn't prevent CPAN from distributing it. OTOH, if there
were a mirror at a .mil address, this could get tricky.
http://search.cpan.org/dist/PerlBuildSystem/licence.txt
If there are any law/license experts in the crowd, I'd love to see a
formal/named/solid version of this sort of license. It's just about
exactly what I've always wanted to put on all my own code.
I agree completely and think this license is right on the mark. We
should all be using this -- it should be required for CPAN modules!
So I've cleaned it up a bit, just correcting the obvious spelling
and grammatical mistakes where I noticed them, and clarified the
intent as I understand it. Though IANAL nor a license expert, I
assume such an expert would make similar clarifications to make
this license legally air-tight!
Here you go:
PerlBuildSystem LICENSE
PerlBuildSystem is a build system written in perl.
PerlBuildSystem is licensed as free software with some "reduced
freedoms" to which no freedom-loving user could possibly object.
Think of it as "Freedom Lite" (or even Freedom From Violence).
This software is NOT donated to certain people, to referred
herein as "entities" and is not for sale. It contains specific
field of use restrictions that legally prevent all infringing
users of it from making any use of it, either personally or
professionally, and therefore from being users of it, unless
those users are positively not affiliated in any way whatsoever
with groups of persons which are armed.
You are entirely, irrevocably and unlimitedly forbidden to use
PerlBuildSystem if any of the following applies to you:
1. You belong to any armed group, including any nation's army, any
city's police department, any private organization's security
services, or any non-governmental militia or recreational group
that, as a group, bears arms (carries and uses weapons). Deer
hunters and Boy Scouts taking Sharp-shooting merit badge, take
note: this means you.
Exception: If you do not "belong to" the armed group in question,
and can provide legal documentation that supports your claim
that you are not in fact the group's property, but are merely
rented or occasionally borrowed for their various and nefarious
uses, you may contact me directly for a limited-use waiver.
2. You are, or are employed by an armament designer, constructor,
producer, or seller. This includes entities that sell
commercial aircraft which are used to deliver the armies, and
their armaments to the places where they go to, you know, kill
babies and stuff, clothing manufacturers with whom any armed group
contracts to supply uniforms to the human weapons that belong
to them, scientists who perform peaceful research at universities
in non-combatant locales, but who do not adequately restrict the
use of their work, like I do, and so whose scientific developments
are then used freely by evil empires to arm their groups and
manufacture their weapons and add Velcro to the boots of their
soldiers that they may more quickly carry out the orders given
them by their evil overlords, or that sell first aid kits to
those crafty armed boy scouts.
4. You are part of, or work for, an entity that directly produces
goods or services for any of the above (entities). To clarify,
if you are even just a private citizen of a country that a) has
an army or b) has not yet successfully suppressed the formation
of groups of people with weapons, or if, by extension, you are a
member of the entity which we collectively call "the human race",
and that entity has not yet attained complete "Peace on Earth"
(or, if by the time you read this humans have begun to inhabit
other places beyond Earth then, by extension "Peace in The
Universe"), chances are that you are probably in some way an (or
part of an, or employed by an, or guilty of giving aid or comfort
to an) entity that in some way produces goods or services that
promotes that evil that men do, to one another from time to time,
to greater and lesser degrees, and often with those certain tools
we affectionately refer to as "weapons" (or the more familiar
"arms", and causing damages to one another that range from mere
fear and emotional distress, through physical control, forced
labor, displacement from homes and towns, detention, and loss of
liberty, all the way up to and including death, sometimes in large
numbers on fields of battle, other times in peaceful civilian
gatherings. And you will continue to be an entity which is
ineligible to run my code until such a time as all of it stops, and
people don't have governments that make armies to do all those
sorts of things anymore. Darn it. So, actually, please nobody use
my code until then.
This limitation is perpetual and may never be revoked, released,
rescinded or reduced. I mean it. Not ever, with no take-backs.
The limitation is also all-encompassing. No loopholes. You can't
use it if you kill for a living, period. Not even for your
non-infringing, non-baby-killing recreational activities.
Entities, and parts and members of entities, and parts of entities'
members that are, or are entities that (and people that) belong to
entities that directly or indirectly support or make money off of,
entities (and not just limited to governments, either) that commit
violence on other ...well, entities (and I presume people) may
seriously NOT, ever, make any use, whatsoever, of my darling
PerlBuildSystem in any way, shape form or context of their evil
little lives. Not even in their private little lives. That means
that even if you only use weapons in a group from nine to five,
and even if you do not take your work home with you at all, not
ever, you still may not use my PerlBuildSystem to build your perl
systems. Nope, not even if you only want to do so at night, on
weekends, or just with your kids. Not even for entirely peaceful,
non-life-threatening purposes. No exceptions. Even if your group
plans to overthrow an even bigger armed group that is even meaner
and better armed, and not *nearly* as nice as yours is, and doesn't
even let their property/soldiers *go* home to their kids on weekends
and build perl systems. Nope, Sorry. You may be a perfectly nice
and polite armed group member (or entity) with kids who just want to
learn perl and all, but we have to draw the line somewhere. Oh, and
even if you don't necessarily *like* your job killing babies, but
are forced to, just while you're at work, because, you know, it's your
job and someone has to do it, you still May Not Use My Code, Not Even
Just With Your Kids On Weekends.
Not until world peace is achieved, sorry. If you don't like it:
Get busy! There are wars out there to stop, man! Differences to
resolve peacefully, economically valuable natural resources in poor
countries to (peacefully) protect from their greedy and more
militarily powerful neighbors, thousand year old racial and ethnic
tensions to prevent from escalating into genocidal events. What
are you waiting for? I did my part -- I wrote this license! Now
you, my would-be users, you can go fix the world, cause you're not
using PerlBuildSystem till -- like, the world is, you know, a better
place and stuff.
Also, note that those groups which kill (and maim, injure, or
otherwise harm, control & cause loss of life and liberty to)
people but who do so using just their bare hands... and/or tools
not normally considered to be "arms" -- screwdrivers, hammers and
four-wheel-drive SUV's come to mind -- are entirely exempt from
all these Real Serious field-of-use restrictions. If you're not a
member of an armed group then, by all means, enjoy!
You "ethnic cleansers" in Darfur that lack funds to buy
commercial-grade automatic weapons... you guys doing the Real,
Hard Work, on the ground, using just your elbow-grease and whatever
implements you happen to find handy... when you come home from a
hard day's work, you go right ahead and use PerlBuildSystem to Build
all your Perl Systems with this contributor's blessing. You're not
"armed", so what the heck? In fact, you might want to use it to
spruce up that amateurish website of yours, and rebuild your donor
database (because you know how hard they're making it these
days to track all the tax forms for charitable contributions
nowadays). No restrictions for you today! Join the mailing list,
unarmed genocidal maniacs! We offer cheerful free tech support!
The only evil-doers I really care to condemn with my code can be
described fully and without reservation using just two words:
"armed groups"
And all you lone serial killers out there? Not being members of
an armed group, you too are eligible to benefit fully from every
line of my labors in creating this startlingly popular code. I do
donate my work to you (and your entities, and your member). In
fact, you're hereby explicitly and personally authorized to build
perl systems with PerlBuildSystem all day long by this here
legal-sounding document that I, its "primary contributor" (being
too modest to describe myself as an author, because of all the work
I do bettering your world) included in it. As long as you rapists,
mall-walking mass-murderers, high-school terrorists and workplace
hostage-takers act alone (and not in pairs!) you may, if you act
now, and for an unlimited time even use all the best, most
sophisticated armor-piercing automatic weaponry that money can buy,
because you're not a group! And therefore I, and PerlBuildSystem,
arbitrarily withhold our world-saving protective influence from
your victims.
How's that for a great way to turn my software development efforts
into a personal statement that can help me kid myself into thinking
I didn't do absolutely *nothing* to make the world a better place
today? Oh, and if you not have read this far, then this license in
no way restricts you from doing anything at all, anyway; not from
using my code in violation of my license, my morals or my best
intentions; this license does not actually even preclude you from
killing actual people, nor does it prevent you from doing so with or
without weapons, screw-drivers, alone, in pairs and with or without
making a slinkedy sound. Regardless of my opinions, governments
and armies and those with influence over others are going to wield
it, or not, in exactly the same ways whether PerlBuildSystem
"licenses" them to or not. What, do I think that you kill people
for a living but yet, for some odd reason, obey software licenses?
But if you believe your paid killing is for a good cause and/or has
provided my peace-loving community with valuable goods and services
and yet, somehow, the above license would preclude you from using
my PerlBuildSystem, then please feel free to contact me. There is
one possible exception to the unlimited-ness of the last exception
however: If you are not currently armed, (nor currently a member
of an armed group) but after reading this license, you are
considering obtaining a weapon (or joining such a group, so that
they'll give you one for free) that you intend to use on people so
dumb that they use their software license as some sort of lame
statement about the need for world peace, then please do not contact
me (directly).
Enjoy!
-dave
