On 2/22/07, Chris Dolan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Feb 21, 2007, at 5:37 PM, A. Pagaltzis wrote:
> * Chris Dolan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2007-02-21 16:00]:
>> For a while Path-Class, Archive-Any and even Encode all lacked
>> license statements. Happily these are now fixed, but if a
>> policy like what you propose had been in place they would have
>> not been allowed in CPAN, much to everyone's loss.
>
> You mean the authors of these modules would have taken their ball
> and gone home, instead of just fixing their lack of licence and
> reuploading?
:-) True enough. You've poked a gaping hole in my argument.
Although I've declared I'm in favor of the ad hoc system that is in
place now, I would not be opposed to a PAUSE rule that required every
upload to contain a LICENSE or COPYING file. That would certainly
have made my Module::License::Report package easier to write!
Please, let's be simple. Let the author use an updated distribution
packager like newer ExtUtils::MakeMaker, Module::Build or
Module::Install and declare a license. This license may be consulted
by merely looking at META.yml. Once it is defined a coherent set of
license identifiers for every OSI license, the license compliance to
the implemented CPAN rule (for example, "only accept OSI licenses")
can be checked trivially.
Of course, questions remain: what if the guy declares a license and
fill the POD with statements of another license? or if he added a
LICENSE file which does not correspond to the license identifier? It
will take forever to resolve these issues. That may be handled as it
is found.
Adriano Ferreira.
