On 06/04/2008 01:50:51 AM, Gabor Szabo wrote: > I know most of you don't want to think about this or don't care at > all > but others do. > So I'd like to clean things up a bit in the way CPAN modules are > licensed. > Let's think about it as a necessary evil... > > While I respect the right of everyone writing whatever they want as > license > I would like to make sure that those who don't know or don't care can > have > an easy way to say that they distribute their code under license X. > I would like this to be correct for the major values of X: > > "the Perl license" > Artistic 2.0 > Artistic 1.0 > GPL > > Others can be added too and that's actually one of my questions here. > Which license should be added? > > Thomas and I would like CPANTS to be able to check that modules > declare about their license in a way acceptable by corporations, > lawyers and even Linux distributions. > > So here are some items that should be checked. > I am thinking aloud, please comment: > > - CPAN distributions should have a LICEN[CS]E file > with the exact text of the license in it > - Each distributed files should have a short version of the license. > Maybe this would only mean the .pm and .pl files, maybe only > the .pm > files, > I am not sure > - Each distro should have a META.yml and a license field in it for > machines to > check the license. (this one is probably not a legal requirement > but > it will > help the various automated tools) > > - Preferably every file in the distro should be under the same > license, > The LICEN[CS]E file should hold the text of this license and > META.yml > should declare the same license. > > When there are portions of the distro under different licenses, > (e.g. I think DBD::SQLite) > there should be a clear indication of this (how? where?) > > I think TPF should get legal advice on how and where this > information should be written? > TPF should also get legal advice on what should we do with > our current text on the existing distros? > Changing the license of a module could be an issue as well. > > Then TPF should publish some of the recommended options. > > > BTW There are several tools out there: > > Software::LicenseUtils http://search.cpan.org/dist/Software-License/ > lists the full text of some of the licenses. > Maybe it is enough to make your distro dependent on > Software::License > and say the license is the specific version of that module? > > Software::LicenseUtils in the same distro can help recognizing > licenses > within the pod. > > > Case study: > when using Software::LicenseUtils 0.003 to check the license of > Module::CPANTS::Analyse 0.81 - the code of CPANTS - it did not find > the license. > I think this happened because SLU is checking some wording and MCA > had > a different wording of the same intention. > I don't know if that matters for the legal departments - TPF should > find that out - > and then make sure we are checking the same thing legals will. > > comments?
My main module says: This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. which I think is fairly common. Is this one of the ones that you reference? One thing that really bugs me is a module that has POD that ends with a page of legalese -- in caps, yet. A suggestion, should what I'm using -- or something equally brief -- should not be acceptable. Have the module reference a file in the distribution that contains the lisence for all files in the distribution. Oh, and *please* don't require lisence POD in modules that would not otherwise have POD.
