I've seen an instance lately of a (relatively old) CPAN module takeover
failing, because the module did not provide a copyright or license, and
so the new maintainer would have to resort to just illegally releasing
and hoping nobody noticed or cared.
While that's fine pragmatically, it raises the issue of licensing.
One of the $rules of CPAN is that it is not for commercial software.
Would it be worth adding a check to PAUSE to reject any distribution for
which a license/copyright either cannot be determined at all, or it can
be determined that it is a non-open-source (i.e. "restricted") license.
At the very least, this would catch people forgetting to add
copyright/licences, and make sure those modules can be maintained at a
later date.
Thoughts?
Adam K
