You should speak with a lawyer if you have any doubts.

Thanks, I know the litany :-). And if I have occasion to need a concrete answer to a question which is really doubtful I will. But the always-correct answer "you should talk to a lawyer" does not help someone who cannot or does not want to talk to a lawyer and just wants to know "Can I take this module and use it at work." or "Can I copy this subroutine into my own program". That's an entry-barrier into using OS software which we can do without. No programmers I know like dealing with legal stuff and if they come up with such a question and don't easily find an answer they may decide to not bother and wander off to use C# instead. I believe that most of these questions can be answered in general with a fair amount of accuracy by a knowledgeable person, and having these answers available would be a good thing.

Anyway, I'm happy with chromatics answer, so no need to butt heads over this.


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^3: The Perl Foundation Wants to Hear From You by tirwhan
in thread The Perl Foundation Wants to Hear From You by Ovid

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