On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 10:28 AM, David Cantrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Anyway, META.yml's licence field is insufficient. A distribution may > contain code and documentation under several different licences. My > most recent release, for example, contains some GPLed code, some > perl-licenced code, and some Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike > 2.0 UK: England & Wales-licenced documentation.
In that case, I recommend not using the license field in META.yml. The purpose of the license field is to expose in metadata, for the 80% (or whatever) of CPAN distributions that have straightforward licensing intentions, what license covers them. If your license isn't so straightforward, then you're correct, the best thing to do is lay out in prose what the licensing considerations are. > 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: > http://module-build.sourceforge.net/META-spec-current.html#license > > says that it is required, and that the list of valid options is in the > Module::Build manpage. There is no such list here: > http://search.cpan.org/~kwilliams/Module-Build-0.2808/lib/Module/Build.pm This link has been fixed in the latest draft of the spec: http://module-build.sourceforge.net/META-spec-blead.html#license (Unfortunately it still points to the wrong site, sf.net [something I'm working on fixing], but at least it points to the right module pod now.) > and it is quite wrong (this is the bug) to say that there is a list of > valid options decreed by Ken Williams. Only the API is decreed by Ken Williams. The actual license mnemonics give enough wiggle room so I don't have to decree anything about what licenses people actually use. They include all the frequently-used licenses on CPAN, plus 3 that divide up the "other" category ("open_source", "restrictive", "unrestricted"), plus the special mnemonic "unknown" for people that don't want to say what their license is in the metadata. > if I want to create Dave's Fabulous Software Licence then I am free to do so. Yes of course, if you want to do that and still use the META stuff as specced, then set license => 'unknown'. And if it gets popular enough, let me know and I'll add it to the list of mnemonics. =) Also note that there's one more place in the META spec where you can specify your license text: http://module-build.sourceforge.net/META-spec-current.html#resources -Ken
