Re: Re: Re: Production Environments and "Foreign" Code

You have a point here. Before using open souce software you should read its license and decide if it is appropriate for you. On the other hand majority of CPAN modules (but not all!) are dual licensed under GPL/Artistic. And Artistic is very flexible license with nearly no restrictions. I doubt using Artistic licensed modules can get you in any trouble.

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Ilya Martynov, ilya@iponweb.net
CTO IPonWEB (UK) Ltd
Quality Perl Programming and Unix Support UK managed @ offshore prices - http://www.iponweb.net
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Comment on Re: Re: Re: Production Environments and "Foreign" Code

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Production Environments and "Foreign" Code by Anonymous Monk on Mar 13, 2003 at 13:34 UTC
It is unlikely that Artistic licensed modules will get you into trouble. But it can. And has. I don't remember whether they were still Hip Communications or ActiveState, but they were shipping a binary version of Perl for Windows, named Perl, without contributing back code changes. That was a no-no. Read the license if you don't believe me. This was many moons ago and was resolved peacefully with Perl 5.005 incorporating ActiveState's changes. (This happened partly through the wisdom of Larry Wall et al, partly through the intervention of Tim O'Reilly, and partly through ActiveState's willingness to risk ticking off Microsoft.) However you are right that it is virtually impossible to conflict with the Artistic License by accident. But corporate legal may find that verifying this is harder than they want - particularly if they are afraid that code which is claimed to be under the Artistic might turn out not to be...	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Production Environments and "Foreign" Code by IlyaM (Parson) on Mar 13, 2003 at 13:56 UTC
I'd say that licenses like BSD and Artistic are less encouraging to contribute back than say GPL but it is more a problem for module authors then for their end users and your example shows it. In the context of this thread it is definetely is not a problem. As for corporate legal may find that verifying this is harder than they want: well, in this case you should not use Perl in first place as Perl itself and all core modules are dual licensed under GPL/Artistic. -- Ilya Martynov, ilya@iponweb.net CTO IPonWEB (UK) Ltd Quality Perl Programming and Unix Support UK managed @ offshore prices - http://www.iponweb.net Personal website - http://martynov.org	[reply]