Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

From Module::Install:

You are also reminded that if the distribution is intended to be uploaded to the CPAN, it must be an OSI-approved open source license. Commercial software is not permitted on the CPAN.

This chafes me wrong.

  1. The opposite of open source is closed source/proprietary, not commercial.
  2. I was reading somewhere that everything can be uploaded to CPAN as long as it is freely distributable, even including binary and/or closed source stuff. I just checked the CPAN FAQ and PAUSE docs, but could not find it again.

Discuss.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: CPAN licencing: freely distributable
by Erez (Priest) on Feb 04, 2008 at 14:13 UTC

    The opposite of open source is closed source/proprietary, not commercial.

    Essentially true, even though "Opposite" isn't the term I'll use here, as there are several approaches to open source, free software, closed source and proprietary.

    ...everything can be uploaded to CPAN as long as it is freely distributable...

    From the CPAN FAQ:

    Does CPAN allow contributions of shareware or code that requests a fee of any kind?

    No. Everything on CPAN is free of charge.

    As for the licensing itself, there isn't any reference to what license you *should* release under, only that most are released under either the Artistic or the GPL licence.

    Software speaks in tongues of man; I debug, therefore I code.
    Stop saying 'script'. Stop saying 'line-noise'.

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