Bradley M. Kuhn wrote: > >Russ Allbery wrote: > > Chris Nandor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > The Package must ALWAYS be distributed under the same licensing terms >as > > > the original. Unless it is public domain or you are the copyright > > > holder, you cannot change the licensing terms. > > > > Not true, as far as I know. I believe that in general, you can >distribute > > under any complying *subset* of the licensing terms. > >I believe that is correct as well. Is subset really the word? Should I choose to accept and redistribute using the AL, I should be able to distribute under any terms I choose that are consistent with the distribution requirements of the AL. This may include adding licensing terms that are not to be found in the AL. An example of why someone would want to do this would be if (like oraperl did) they are distributing a version of Perl that is modified and linked to other code with other restrictions. Allowing this is part of the intent of the AL, and so this is an important example to keep in mind. [...] > > It's quite possible that a major contributor to Perl could come along > > later, disagree with something Larry gave someone permission to do, and > > insist that they stop or remove their contributions to Perl from the >code > > that they're using. In fact there have been changes to the AL over the years which could cause exactly this kind of disagreement. Hopefully it will not, but... >I don't think this is completely out the question, either. I was actually >planning on writing an RFC that proposes that all contributions to the core >be copyright assigned to Larry. I agree that something needs to be done, but I have an alternate proposal which I think could give Larry a license with this flexibility without facing the paperwork of actually assigning copyrights etc. Given the nature of the Perl community and key developers, I think that reducing legal paperwork to a bare minimum is a significant consideration. The legal issues should be cleanly taken care of, but without evident fuss. >I figured that would be a controversial proposal, but it does avert the >problems that Russ brings up. It would only become controversial once people realize how much work it is. :-) >It seems to me that we should ask all perl developers to trust Larry >completely in matters of licensing, and thus copyright assign to him so he >can make changes as necessary. My proposal would leave developers with more of a say and Larry with less paperwork. Since I don't think that Larry would want to make any more controversial licensing changes than he has to, the overall effect should be the same. Additionally if it works, IMO it would provide a cleaner template for other projects that want to use an AL arrangement. Cheers, Ben _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.
