Hi Chris!
On Friday 07 July 2006 17:04, Chris Dolan wrote:
> On Jul 7, 2006, at 8:13 AM, Shlomi Fish wrote:
> > This kind of attitude was also said by another responder to this
> > mailing list.
> > It's sort of a "small headed" (see
> > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2004/12/06.html ) "I just want
> > to write
> > code and am not interested in any legal details" attitude.
>
> May I suggest a compromise? As the author of the MIT-licensed code
> in Test::Run, Shlomi has the option of releasing the code under any
> license he prefers. Shlomi can releases *two* versions of Test::Run
> with every update -- a mixed license version and an Artistic/GPL
> version. With that solution, Shlomi himself shoulders the burden of
> resolving license compatibility and tracking which line of code is
> under which license.
Right. Finally a reasonable approach. Thanks.
>
> I do believe that the quest for license simplicity in the Perl core
> is not "small headed" or rooted in ignorance, but is instead
> inspired.
I didn't say it was. What I wanted to say is that people should have the
minimal knowledge to understand that MIT X11 licence is compatible with
GPL+Artistic (where Artistic is 1.0 or 2.0) code and can be re-licensed to it
at will, even without requesting permission from its originators.
In regards to putting it in the core - there's still a long way to go before
Test::Run and its auxiliary modules are suitable for being placed in the
core. When and if this is going to happen we'll see what I have to do about
it. But we should cross the bridge when we get to it.
Until then I believe that licensing my newly written code under the MIT X11
licence is a long-term benefit *because* it can be re-licensed to a different
licence without asking anyone for permission.
> While many developers or TPF itself could easily delve
> deep enough to decide whether MIT/BSD licensed code in the core is a
> threat, I think that would be a wasted effort. The increased
> complexity of licensing (whether real or perceived) could easily turn
> off third parties with less dedication to Perl, thereby decreasing
> the attractiveness of the language.
Right. I don't mind my BSD-licensed code to be re-licensed as GPL+Artistic
before entering the core (when and if it is going to enter the core). But I'd
like to keep it as BSD-license until then, and hopefully be able to maintain
it as BSD on CPAN separately afterwards.
>
> After all, software engineering is largely about reducing the exposed
> complexity of a project.
>
Right.
I should note that it's not as if one .pm file is BSD and its neighbour is
GPL+Artistic in the Test::Run svn repository. I have several directories each
for every CPAN distribution. The Test::Run distribution was derived from
Test::Harness and is such Perl-licensed. The Test::Run::CmdLine distribution
which was re-implemented from scratch and serves as its command line backend
is X11-licensed. The plugins are also BSD-licensed as they were
re-implemented from scratch. And finally Test-Run-TAP-Model, which is a port
of Test-TAP-Model for Test-Run is also GPL+Artistic, because it is derived
work.
I daresay this thread did not quite meet my expectations, possibly because of
bad phrasing of the original proposal on my part. What I wanted to say is:
1. Test::Run could use some work.
2. If anyone wishes to work on it and get paid, he can try getting a grant
from TPF.
3. I'm not interested in such a grant as I already have a full time job.
However, I can act as a mentor.
4. a) Code that originated from existing Test::Harness code or is somehow
associated with it, should be kept as GPL+Artistic.
b) New plugins, wrappers, etc. should preferably be MIT X11. In any case, the
author can specify any common and GPL-compatible licence in the Copyright
section of the POD in the directory in which the module resides in.
--------------
This is what I wanted to say on one leg. Maybe my over-wordy description was
not clear enough.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Homepage: http://www.shlomifish.org/
95% of the programmers consider 95% of the code they did not write, in the
bottom 5%.
