Marpa::R3, Perl license

[Jeffrey Kegler]

The folks on the marpa IRC channel and I have quietly begun a Marpa::R3 effort.  This will eliminated everything kept in Marpa::R2 for backward compatibility:  The only supported interface will be the SLIF (which is the one almost everyone uses anyway).  This will clear the way to a refactoring of the code, and to new features.  Perl 5.10.1 and above will be supported.  Support for 5.10.0 is eliminated.

In the process, I'm thinking of re-licensing.  Currently Marpa::R3 is LGPL, because Marpa::R2 was.  I want to switch to the Perl license (dual-license GPL and Artistic License 1.0) because

1.)  The licensing discussion for Libmarpa, and its resulting switch to the MIT license, revealed that more liberal licensing works well, and is what the community wants.

2.)  For Perl modules, the FSF recommends this "Perl license", because it fits the Perl community and the ecosystem.

3.) Perl.org encourages use of the Perl license and their legal advice focuses on it.  I plan to change the licensing language to follow their guidelines more closely.

Your comments are very welcome.

[Ed Avis]

If you want to make the licence strictly more liberal than before, you could
make it 'LGPL or Artistic' rather than 'GPL or Artistic'.

--
Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>

[Jeffrey Kegler]

That's an interesting idea, but I think I want to go with the community consensus.  Nobody seems to express a problem with the Perl dual-license not being liberal enough.  The Perl Foundation's licensing advice centers on it.  And even the FSF, for Perl modules, suggests that following the Perl community consensus is the best way to go.

Under the LGPL, there were cases where the company lawyers told people they could not read my code.  After reflection, I decided to accept that this was a problem.  A dual LGPL-Artistic 1.0 license would, in theory, be more liberal.  But we're fortunate to have an almost universal community consensus, and staying within it makes life easier all around.

--
Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>

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[Ed Avis]

Jeffrey Kegler <jeffreykegler@...> writes:

>Under the LGPL, there were cases where the company lawyers told people they
>could not read my code.

Have you checked that GPL+Artistic would fix this? I would imagine that the
same lawyers would give the same answer.

--
Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>

[Jeffrey Kegler]

The difference seems to be between what are called "permissive" licenses and copyleft licenses.  Perl license is a dual-license, and the licensee gets the choice.  The artistic license 1.0 seems to be accepted as permissive.  This "Perl license" is by far the most used license on CPAN, and nobody seems to squawk about it.

--
Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>

[Ron Savage]

Check your LICENSE files - FSF has a new physical address:

Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.,

51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA