This reasoning would say that the Artistic License gives anyone the right to do anything they want with Perl's source code with no repercussions in the USA. If this reasoning got applied to other licenses, it could be bad for other open source licenses, like the GPL.

But if that reason got applied to other licenses, there's a much smaller chance of holding up. The argument used in this case was that the terms in the Artistic license were too vague - something people have been saying for at least a dozen years. Some people have considered the Artistic license not to be 'free' or 'open' because the wording leaves too many leapholes. Redhat prefers to not have packages that just have the Artistic license (I've changed licenses of code of mine after being contacted by RedHat's legal department) And that's why there's now Artistic 2.0.

So, I'm glad the Artistic license hold up (but I presume it can be appealed all the way to the high court), but I don't think the GPL or other strongly worded licenses would be in danger if it didn't held up.

In reply to Re: Artistic License upheld by court by JavaFan
in thread Artistic License upheld by court by tilly

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