Hi Octavian,
Octavian Rasnita wrote on Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 08:25:51PM +0300:
> I don't think it is philosophical, because I need to be sure that
> I respect the licence,
Yes, you must assure that indeed!
> and maybe I don't understand it correctly, but as far as I know,
> the GPL licence say that I can use a GPL licenced software in my
> software only if I release my software as GPL.
No, that's not true; for example, you are also allowed to use GPL
licensed software in your own software if you do NOT distribute
your own software at all. You are by no means required to release
your own GPL-based work to anybody. You need to be very careful in
rushing to conclusions from what you think the spirit of some license.
Typically, courts will pick at nits, too, it's not just me.
The GPL is quite complicated (which is one of the various reasons
some people like it and others don't, but that's not relevant here).
Commercial licenses are usually very complicated, too. Do not rely
on what random people (like me) on the Internet tell you; Jan Dubois
is not random in the present context, but even he stated that you
should not rely on his words, either.
> I don't know if the artistic licence is more liberal though...
Than, please, READ IT, and if you rely on your reading for
commercial purposes, discuss it with a lawyer before acting on it.
> What I want to do is to create a program in perl language, to offer
> the source code to the client, to allow him to modify and add features
> to the program, but to not allow him to give the original or modified
> source to anyone.
If you want to distribute Perl source code without fee, i suspect
(and hope) that maybe, at least to some degree, you care about free
and open software. In that case, for making your work as useful as
possible for others (including your clients), consider the following:
The following is not legal, but political advice.
1. Resist the temptation to craft your own license.
There are dozens of well-known and widely used
open-source licenses around. Probably, one of them
will fit your needs. Prefer well-known and widely
used licenses to rare and obscure ones. This will
make life easier both for you and for your clients.
Probably, they already know that license, they know
how to handle it, and are not forced to have their
lawyers evaluate yet another license.
Besides, when they use parts of various software to create
something new and redistribute it, the more licenses get
involved, the more hassle to deal with.
2. Consider using the license of the software you are
building upon (or a license granting even more rights).
So, if you write Perl code, carefully check whether you
can use the Artistic license (ISC would also be fine
because it is even slightly more liberal, but shun the GPL
when contributing to Perl). Following this advice, people
face no additional obstacles using your code, and in case
it is really good, maybe it might even get integrated in
the base distribution at some time in the future.
On the other hand, when you add restrictions to the base
license and your code is really good, you can be reasonably
sure that someone will sooner or later reimplement the
concept from scratch and release it under the base license.
At that point, people will trash your work.
3. Keep your license as short, concise and easy to understand
even for non-lawyers as possible while still making sure
it is legally enforcible. This applies both when choosing
from existing licenses and when drafting new ones (hopefully
not). Most users will not be lawyers. Nearly all people
changing the code will not be lawyers. If they can
understand the license, that's really an asset.
4. If you end up wanting to require something seemingly required
by nobody else, seriously reconsider whether it does indeed
make sense. The number of ways to render software basically
useless by requiring absurd things in the license is unlimited.
Most of these traps look innocuous on first sight.
There are reasons why some requirements are typically left out
of licenses; do not think that your favourite idea is not in any
wide-spread license just because nobody thought of it yet.
People do think of all kinds of weird stuff. Probably, there
is some license out there containing that condition, but the
license is not wide-spread for that very reason.
Deciding license issues is delicate. Do take the time (and money,
if required) to make sure that what you are doing really makes
sense for you, for your clients and for the Perl community at large.
We don't need yet another ill-conceived, vaguely worded license
containing dubious, hard-to-comply-with, mousetrap restrictions.
Yours,
Ingo
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