There is no difference between installing a module and copypasting the code into your own module. As long as the module license permits that (i.e. is one of the two commonly used licenses on CPAN) and you retain the copyright notice things are fine either way. I was not arguing that. I am talking about taking the code without attribution and integrating it into your codebase as if it were your own. That entails legal risks for both you and the original author.

Same thing goes for modifying the code, if the module license permits that (the GPL and the PAL do) everything's fine. If you redistribute your modifications you need to make the code freely available, but that's a bit of a non-issue anyway with Perl (though it's one reason why trying to obfuscate your Perl code when selling it is a hare-brained idea).

The whole point of my argument is that people should not try to "sneak" code from CPAN into their codebase. If you want to use code from CPAN do so, that's what it's there for and the legality is clearly (enough IMO) defined. If you want to create a derivative work do so, just stick to the licenses conditions on what you need to do in that case (i.e. retain the copyright attribution). Don't copy it in and assume you're doing the right or clever thing. And I wasn't saying Moron did that, I was asking.


Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian W. Kernighan

In reply to Re^13: Why non-core CPAN modules can't be used in large corporate environments. by tirwhan
in thread Why non-core CPAN modules can't be used in large corporate environments. by Moron

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