* David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2008-03-31T11:28:49] > If you only care that it be free software, then you needn't bother, as that's > one of the pre-requisites for something being on the CPAN.
I don't believe that's actually true. Is there some requirement, when uploading, that one has agreed that anything uploaded without some OSI license attached is actually automatically licensed under the Perl 5 license, or..? You might call it a prerequisite, but unless the author has agreed to it, it isn't true. This is a problem for, say, Data::UUID where the author uploaded it with no license and then vanished, leading Debian to secretly wrap a slightly incompatible module with code called Data::UUID. > > [1] Among others I have talked to the Debian and Fedora packagers and > > they both said that one of the problematic issues with CPAN modules is > > the lack or incorrect license information. > > How can they possibly determine whether a licence is correct or not? It can conflict between the POD and the META.yml, perhaps. > I would also note that the META.yml license field is insufficiently > documented, and that what little documentation there is shows that the > spec is buggy. This page: Agreed, whole-heartedly. This recently came up briefly in comments on Barbie's use.perl.org journal. -- rjbs
