I don't see what the problem is. It's known that Debian is very picky on license issues. It's also known that Perl *isn't*, that Larry *doesn't* want a very tight license (there's a reason that the AL is vague - the AL is a declaration of intend, and not a legal document like the GPL), and that most CPAN authors don't really care (hence the "under the same terms as Perl" clause).

Frankly, I don't think Perl or the CPAN authors should change. If Debian wants a strong position on licensing, good for them. If that means they have to drop software from their distribution, than that's the price they pay. It's their choice. I'm all for free software, but I loathe all the hassle that surrounds licensing.

I'm a Debian user myself and I couldn't care less whether some Perl module from CPAN was included or not. If you can't type

    perl -MCPAN -eshell
    cpan> install Foo::Bar Quux::Fnurd
[download]

you're probably not going to use those modules anyway. There's lots of software I like to use. Do you really think I won't use it because it wasn't included on the Debian CDs I own? Come on.

Programmers won't collectively flee to Python just because Debian doesn't include a bunch of freely available CPAN modules on their CD's.

Abigail