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Perl6's License Should Be a Minor Bugfix of Perl5's License
Maintainer: Bradley M. Kuhn <bkuhn@ebb.org> Date: 13 Sep 2000 Last Modified: 29 Sep 2000 Mailing List: perl6-licenses@perl.org Number: 219 Version: 2 Status: Withdrawn Requires: RFC 211: The Artistic License Must Be Changed
This RFC has been withdrawn. I made this proposal because there was nothing else on the table at the time. However, I now endorse my new RFC:
RFC 346: Perl6's License Should be (GPL|Artistic-2.0)
If someone else would like to take control of this RFC and champion it, they are welcome to, but I believe that no one currently supports this idea.
This is a minimalist approach to the licensing for perl6. The only change from perl5 is some minor changes to the Artistic License. The Artistic license is changed to clarify it better legally, yielding "The Clarified Artistic License" (referred to "AL-Clarified" for short). The overall license of perl6 would remain a dual-license, the disjunction of the GPL and AL-Clarified.
This proposal takes a minimalist approach for the licensing of perl6.
The only change between the license proposed here and the license of perl5 is some minor changes to the Artistic License. These changes fix only a few minor problems in the Artistic License to clarify some points, and ensure that it is a free software license. (See RFC211 for reasons why the Artistic License should be changed.)
Thus, this RFC proposes two measures:
The Artistic License is updated as little as possible to make it more legally sound and to ensure it is definitely a free software license without question nor reservation. This yields a variant of the Artistic License which has been dubbed "The Clarified Artistic License".
The license of perl6 itself will be a dual-license, the disjunction of the GNU General Public License and The Clarified Artistic License.
The Clarified Artistic License is provided in two forms here. First, it is provided as a patch against the current Artistic License. Second, the entire text of the Clarified Artistic License is included.
# Change the Artistic License into the Clarified Artistic License # # To apply this patch: # STEP 1: Chdir to the source directory. # STEP 2: Run the 'applypatch' program with this patch file as input. # # If you do not have 'applypatch', it is part of the 'makepatch' package # that you can fetch from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network: # www.perl.com # In the above URL, 'x' should be 2 or higher. # # To apply this patch without the use of 'applypatch': # STEP 1: Chdir to the source directory. # STEP 2: Run the 'patch' program with this file as input. # #### End of Preamble #### #### Patch data follows #### diff -c 'Artistic' 'Artistic.clarified' Index: ./Artistic *** ./Artistic Fri May 26 19:21:32 2000 --- ./Artistic.clarified Fri May 26 19:23:01 2000 *************** *** 1,4 **** ! The "Artistic License" Preamble --- 1,4 ---- ! The Clarified Artistic License Preamble *************** *** 25,40 **** "You" is you, if you're thinking about copying or distributing this Package. ! "Reasonable copying fee" is whatever you can justify on the ! basis of media cost, duplication charges, time of people involved, ! and so on. (You will not be required to justify it to the ! Copyright Holder, but only to the computing community at large ! as a market that must bear the fee.) ! ! "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the item ! itself, though there may be fees involved in handling the item. ! It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute it ! under the same conditions they received it. 1. You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the Standard Version of this Package without restriction, provided that you --- 25,37 ---- "You" is you, if you're thinking about copying or distributing this Package. ! "Distribution fee" is a fee you charge for providing a copy ! of this Package to another party. ! ! "Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the right to ! use the item, though there may be fees involved in handling the ! item. It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute ! it under the same conditions they received it. 1. You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the Standard Version of this Package without restriction, provided that you *************** *** 50,59 **** following: a) place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make them ! Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to Usenet or ! an equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a major archive ! site such as uunet.uu.net, or by allowing the Copyright Holder to include ! your modifications in the Standard Version of the Package. b) use the modified Package only within your corporation or organization. --- 47,57 ---- following: a) place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make them ! Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to Usenet or an ! equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a major network ! archive site allowing unrestricted access to them, or by allowing the ! Copyright Holder to include your modifications in the Standard Version ! of the Package. b) use the modified Package only within your corporation or organization. *************** *** 80,95 **** d) make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder. ! 5. You may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this ! Package. You may charge any fee you choose for support of this ! Package. You may not charge a fee for this Package itself. However, ! you may distribute this Package in aggregate with other (possibly ! commercial) programs as part of a larger (possibly commercial) software ! distribution provided that you do not advertise this Package as a ! product of your own. You may embed this Package's interpreter within ! an executable of yours (by linking); this shall be construed as a mere ! form of aggregation, provided that the complete Standard Version of the ! interpreter is so embedded. 6. The scripts and library files supplied as input to or produced as output from the programs of this Package do not automatically fall --- 78,94 ---- d) make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder. ! 5. You may charge a distribution fee for any distribution of this Package. ! If you offer support for this Package, you may charge any fee you choose ! for that support. You may not charge a license fee for the right to use ! this Package itself. You may distribute this Package in aggregate with ! other (possibly commercial and possibly nonfree) programs as part of a ! larger (possibly commercial and possibly nonfree) software distribution, ! and charge license fees for other parts of that software distribution, ! provided that you do not advertise this Package as a product of your own. ! You may embed this Package's interpreter within an executable of yours (by ! linking); this shall be construed as a mere form of aggregation, provided ! that the complete Standard Version of the interpreter is so embedded. 6. The scripts and library files supplied as input to or produced as output from the programs of this Package do not automatically fall #### End of Patch data #### #### ApplyPatch data follows #### # Data version : 1.0 # Date generated : Tue Sep 12 16:53:11 2000 # Generated by : makepatch 2.00 # Recurse directories : Yes # p 'Artistic' 6107 #### End of ApplyPatch data #### #### End of Patch kit [created: Tue Sep 12 16:53:11 2000] #### #### Checksum: 136 5765 28601 ####
The Clarified Artistic License Preamble
The intent of this document is to state the conditions under which a Package may be copied, such that the Copyright Holder maintains some semblance of artistic control over the development of the package, while giving the users of the package the right to use and distribute the Package in a more-or-less customary fashion, plus the right to make reasonable modifications.
Definitions:
"Package" refers to the collection of files distributed by the
Copyright Holder, and derivatives of that collection of files
created through textual modification.
"Standard Version" refers to such a Package if it has not been
modified, or has been modified in accordance with the wishes
of the Copyright Holder as specified below.
"Copyright Holder" is whoever is named in the copyright or
copyrights for the package.
"You" is you, if you're thinking about copying or distributing
this Package.
"Distribution fee" is a fee you charge for providing a copy
of this Package to another party.
"Freely Available" means that no fee is charged for the right to
use the item, though there may be fees involved in handling the
item. It also means that recipients of the item may redistribute
it under the same conditions they received it.
1. You may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the Standard Version of this Package without restriction, provided that you duplicate all of the original copyright notices and associated disclaimers.
2. You may apply bug fixes, portability fixes and other modifications derived from the Public Domain or from the Copyright Holder. A Package modified in such a way shall still be considered the Standard Version.
3. You may otherwise modify your copy of this Package in any way, provided that you insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating how and when you changed that file, and provided that you do at least ONE of the following:
a) place your modifications in the Public Domain or otherwise make them
Freely Available, such as by posting said modifications to Usenet or an
equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a major network
archive site allowing unrestricted access to them, or by allowing the
Copyright Holder to include your modifications in the Standard Version
of the Package.
b) use the modified Package only within your corporation or organization.
c) rename any non-standard executables so the names do not conflict
with standard executables, which must also be provided, and provide
a separate manual page for each non-standard executable that clearly
documents how it differs from the Standard Version.
d) make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder.
4. You may distribute the programs of this Package in object code or executable form, provided that you do at least ONE of the following:
a) distribute a Standard Version of the executables and library files,
together with instructions (in the manual page or equivalent) on where
to get the Standard Version.
b) accompany the distribution with the machine-readable source of
the Package with your modifications.
c) give non-standard executables non-standard names, and clearly
document the differences in manual pages (or equivalent), together
with instructions on where to get the Standard Version.
d) make other distribution arrangements with the Copyright Holder.
5. You may charge a distribution fee for any distribution of this Package. If you offer support for this Package, you may charge any fee you choose for that support. You may not charge a license fee for the right to use this Package itself. You may distribute this Package in aggregate with other (possibly commercial and possibly nonfree) programs as part of a larger (possibly commercial and possibly nonfree) software distribution, and charge license fees for other parts of that software distribution, provided that you do not advertise this Package as a product of your own. You may embed this Package's interpreter within an executable of yours (by linking); this shall be construed as a mere form of aggregation, provided that the complete Standard Version of the interpreter is so embedded.
6. The scripts and library files supplied as input to or produced as output from the programs of this Package do not automatically fall under the copyright of this Package, but belong to whoever generated them, and may be sold commercially, and may be aggregated with this Package. If such scripts or library files are aggregated with this Package via the so-called "undump" or "unexec" methods of producing a binary executable image, then distribution of such an image shall neither be construed as a distribution of this Package nor shall it fall under the restrictions of Paragraphs 3 and 4, provided that you do not represent such an executable image as a Standard Version of this Package.
7. C subroutines (or comparably compiled subroutines in other languages) supplied by you and linked into this Package in order to emulate subroutines and variables of the language defined by this Package shall not be considered part of this Package, but are the equivalent of input as in Paragraph 6, provided these subroutines do not change the language in any way that would cause it to fail the regression tests for the language.
8. Aggregation of this Package with a commercial distribution is always permitted provided that the use of this Package is embedded; that is, when no overt attempt is made to make this Package's interfaces visible to the end user of the commercial distribution. Such use shall not be construed as a distribution of this Package.
9. The name of the Copyright Holder may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
10. THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
The End
The following is the license for perl6 that this RFC proposes:
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of either:
a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any
later version, or
b) the "Clarified Artistic License" which comes with this Kit.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either
the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this Kit,
in the file named "Artistic.clarified". If not, I'll be glad to provide
one.
You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program in the file named "COPYING"; if not, write to
the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
MA 02111-1307, USA.
The Artistic License
RFC 211: The Artistic License Must Be Changed