A Chatterbox question by belg4mit got me curious, but I can't find any answers in the FAQ.

The question was, to paraphrase, what (if any) are the license terms of code at PerlMonks where the license itself isn't specified? Is there an official answer on this? If there is an official policy, does it apply to all code or just code in the snippets section?

Update: A few days after I asked this question, there was a thread on slashdot about the legality of contributed code. If you found the thread that roboticus posted interesting, you may also enjoy the /. discussion.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: License terms for monastery code?
by roboticus (Chancellor) on Nov 30, 2006 at 22:44 UTC
[reply]
      Yeah, but it's never really been resolved. In my own Super search the most pertinent node I came across was How to license projects that come from Perlmonks. The problem with "contact the author" is people tend to fall away from the Monastery...

      An interesting "solution" (not addressing formerly active users) might be to have a (selective set, with "Other") of options to choose from in user settings which is then shown on a user's home node.

      --
      In Bob We Trust, All Others Bring Data.

[reply]
        belg4mit:

        D'Oh! Shame on me for not reading the thread I mentioned. I guess I should've at least checked to see if the matter was resolved before posting...

        --roboticus

[reply]
        Another possibility would be to define a "lowest common denominator" ( for instance "code on Perlmonks by default comes with the same license as perl itself", or "code on Perlmonks by default is in public domain"), then display a disclaimer about this at account creation ( "unless otherwise stated, published code will be licensed as follow").
        I know, how do we manage code posted since 1999 by 50000 existing monks? :)
[reply]
      Thanks roboticus! I had thought I'd done that, but apparently not. Feel free to reap this node, NodeReaper.
[reply]

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