David Grove wrote:
>Whatever is done, it should be clear that a situation that exists today
>should
>not be permitted in the future. It should be impossible for a (corporate)
>entity, based on the GPL, to restrict the redistribution of Perl, which is
>a
>right seemingly granted by the AL. The conbination of the GPL's freedom and
>the
>AL's loopholes have been a primary vehicle in damage to certain areas of
>the
>perl language and communities, by allowing a company to force user
>dependence
>upon their commercially oriented website for our free toolset, and creating
>an
>undeserved _de_facto_ standard based on manipulation of legal terms between
>the
>licenses.
Um, distribution under the GPL has to include offers of source.
In fact the terms of the GPL are all designed to promote a very
specific philosophy that is counter to traditional commercial
practices!
>If perl is to be called free software, there can be no limitation on
>redistribution of compiled binaries. This incorrigible business practice
>has
>become an epitome of how some open source licenses do not work.
If Perl is to meet either the Debian or OSI definitions of
free or open source (respectively) software it cannot restrict
the sale of compiled binaries.
>As it stands, the two licenses can be used to contradict each other. Any
>draft
>license should be a single entity, and should prohibit practices that have
>lead
>to Win32 monopoly within the Perl sphere (limiting redistribution by
>manipulation of legalities, and by packaging with minimal additional
>software).
>Any entity who distributes perl in binary MUST be required to a) allow
>those
>binaries to be redistributed freely; b) release the source, makefiles, and
>modifications that have led to those binaries, including all portions of
>the
>software [non-proprietary modules, in this case]; and c) allow for the
>redistribution of those sources. If those conditions aren't met, then the
>license does not provide for the "freeness" of the software it is supposed
>to
>protect, and are just words in a README file that nobody actually reads
>because
>they have no meaning when put into practice.
Please read the draft that I put out of an AL. I suspect
that it does indeed provide the restrictions you are looking
for. In fact I think it is the only idea under discussion
which could be palatable to Perl developers that comes close
to doing so.
Cheers,
Ben
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