Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 01:56:44PM +0100, Dave Cross wrote: > On 06/14/2011 01:45 PM, David Cantrell wrote: > > > >CPANTS is over there --> :-) > > Actually, CPANTS looks a little broken. Its data is almost three years old. > > "CPANTS data generated with Perl 5.010001, Module::CPANTS::Analyse > 0.82_01 and Module::CPANTS::ProcessCPAN 0.77, at 2008-08-13 > 10:00:03." There was some work on it during the QA hackathon in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, but I suspect the effort may have been sabotaged by a surfeit of real life and a dearth of tuits. -- Paul Johnson - p...@pjcj.net http://www.pjcj.net
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
On 06/14/2011 01:45 PM, David Cantrell wrote: On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 01:39:55PM +0100, Edmund von der Burg wrote: On 14 June 2011 12:22, David Cantrell wrote: It also has the problem that only people who care will use your module in their tests, and they will be exactly the sort of people who don't need your module! Perhaps this idea should live in the cpantesters' domain - I'd love toget an email whenever I uploaded something that had a licensing issue (whatever that is). And if there was a scoreboard of some sort then people would pay attention :) CPANTS is over there --> :-) Actually, CPANTS looks a little broken. Its data is almost three years old. "CPANTS data generated with Perl 5.010001, Module::CPANTS::Analyse 0.82_01 and Module::CPANTS::ProcessCPAN 0.77, at 2008-08-13 10:00:03." http://cpants.perl.org/ Dave...
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 01:39:55PM +0100, Edmund von der Burg wrote: > On 14 June 2011 12:22, David Cantrell wrote: > > It also has the problem that only people who care will use your module > > in their tests, and they will be exactly the sort of people who don't > > need your module! > Perhaps this idea should live in the cpantesters' domain - I'd love to > get an email whenever I uploaded something that had a licensing issue > (whatever that is). And if there was a scoreboard of some sort then > people would pay attention :) CPANTS is over there --> :-) -- David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence I apologize if I offended you personally, I intended to do it professionally. -- Steve Champeon, on the nanog list
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
On 14 June 2011 12:22, David Cantrell wrote: > It also has the problem that only people who care will use your module > in their tests, and they will be exactly the sort of people who don't > need your module! True. Perhaps this idea should live in the cpantesters' domain - I'd love to get an email whenever I uploaded something that had a licensing issue (whatever that is). And if there was a scoreboard of some sort then people would pay attention :) Cheers, Edmund.
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
David Cantrell said:
On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Bamber wrote:
Experience in packaging perl modules from CPAN , suggests that most
CPAN authors are woefully ignorant of copyright and licensing
issues.
Doing the Right Thing isn't exactly obvious/easy either, so I don't
find this surprising at all.
The concept appears to be flawed, as it appears to care about the
licence field in META.yml, which is known to have been a bad idea.
It's a bad idea because it only supports one value and because that
value has to be one of a small set of licences deemed acceptable.
What you describe here is a bug in the META.yml spec and/or its
supporting modules. No need to work around those when they can be
fixed, eh? :)
If you want to use any other licence, you're supposed to lie in
META.yml and say that your licence is "unknown".
"you're supposed to lie" sounds like a tremendously bad advice.
Obviously, there's something wrong here that can be fixed?
It also has the problem that only people who care will use your
module in their tests, and they will be exactly the sort of people
who don't need your module!
Adding copyright statements (even if arcane/outdated/whatever) is
useful to tell the world who decides the license. This is sometimes
very useful information (especially when the copyright holder chooses
stricter licenses, and the module is useful in commercial settings). I
think adding copyright and license information is helpful for the
former and necessary for the latter - especially if different files in
a distribution have different licenses, or some files are "imports"
from other projects (e.g. distributing a Catalyst app that has the
jQuery files packaged for conveniency.)
For this reason I think having a Test module might be useful (I'd
rather name it Test::License, though.) Make it an author test and put
it in xt/ somewhere.
- Salve (Oslo.pm)
--
#!/usr/bin/perl
sub AUTOLOAD{$AUTOLOAD=~/.*::(\d+)/;seek(DATA,$1,0);print# Salve Joshua Nilsen
getc DATA}$"="'};&{'";@_=unpack("C*",unpack("u*",':4@,$'.#
'2!--"5-(50P%$PL,!0X354UC-PP%/0\`'."\n"));eval "&{'@_'}"; __END__ is near! :)
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 10:25:00PM +0100, Nicholas Bamber wrote: > Experience in packaging perl modules from CPAN , suggests that most CPAN > authors are woefully ignorant of copyright and licensing issues. > Unfortunately I have been provoked into attempting to do something about > this. I present Test::Copyright. I would appreciate feedback not least > on the idea. The concept appears to be flawed, as it appears to care about the licence field in META.yml, which is known to have been a bad idea. It's a bad idea because it only supports one value and because that value has to be one of a small set of licences deemed acceptable. If you want to use any other licence, you're supposed to lie in META.yml and say that your licence is "unknown". It also has the problem that only people who care will use your module in their tests, and they will be exactly the sort of people who don't need your module! -- David Cantrell | http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david Support terrierism! Adopt a dog today!
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 07:37:00AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: > Also, I'm not sure why the copyright statements in individual files > need to match the general copyright statement - if a given submodule > was last updated in 1997 and was stable since then, then I would > expect it to have a copyright of (say) "Copyright (C) E. X. Ample > 1995-1997", and not to find "2011" in the copyright line just because > a new version of the module was released that modified other files in > the package - hence giving a copyright of (say) "Copyright (C) E. X. > Ample 1995-1999, 2005-2011" for the entire thing. The whole thing is completely unnecessary. It's a historical habit that refuses to go away, and it's not even ours. The presence and form of copyright statements was necessary in the US prior to 1989, when they signed the Berne convention after a century of dithering. The Berne convention explicitly disallows these statements having any significance - copyright is universal and automatic. The things stick around because lawyers don't see "it's a pointless waste of time" as a reason to stop doing something. They usually give a fairly vague argument about it being a deterrent and discouraging defenses based on "I didn't know", and then fall back on "Why not include it just to be safe? You want to be safe don't you? Where's the harm?" Double irony: the US notice requirement was for the word 'Copyright' or the C-in-circle symbol, but (C) was never an acceptable substitute. None of this has ever been relevant in the UK. I leave you with a copy of /bin/true from Solaris: 8<-- #!/usr/bin/sh # Copyright (c) 1984, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 AT&T # All Rights Reserved # THIS IS UNPUBLISHED PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODE OF AT&T # The copyright notice above does not evidence any # actual or intended publication of such source code. #ident "@(#)true.sh1.6 93/01/11 SMI" /* SVr4.0 1.4 */ 8<--
Re: RFC: Test::Copyright
What's the point of checking for a copyright ending date that matches the current year? Or perhaps I should ask, whom do you envisage running such tests? The developer, or end users? It's good for the developer, I suppose, but useless for end users - if they install something that was last updated three years ago (because it's been stable since then and no bugs were found nor are any new features needed), then there's no point in having a current copyright. Also, I'm not sure why the copyright statements in individual files need to match the general copyright statement - if a given submodule was last updated in 1997 and was stable since then, then I would expect it to have a copyright of (say) "Copyright (C) E. X. Ample 1995-1997", and not to find "2011" in the copyright line just because a new version of the module was released that modified other files in the package - hence giving a copyright of (say) "Copyright (C) E. X. Ample 1995-1999, 2005-2011" for the entire thing. Cheers, Philip
