On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 5:10 PM, David Golden <xda...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 5:33 PM, Chris Weyl <chris.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> we ought to
>> give authors a clear, easy way to unambiguously specify the terms
>> their software is under...
>
> Authors have a clear, easy, unambiguous way to specify the terms there
> software is under.
>
> THEY WRITE IT IN THE SOURCE FILES!
Well, yes, but that's not exactly optimal. The same argument could be
made that authors have a clear, easy, unambiguous way of specifying
their software's dependencies: in the source! And that's not exactly
optimal, either, so it gets (re)stated in Makefile.PL/Build.PL/etc and
then regurgitated out into META.yml for tool usage. Right now, we're
in a situation where even if an author wanted to more precisely state
what the licensing scheme is, the current spec doesn't support it.
I'd say that's the problem... Expanding to a set of licenses, with a
larger base of tags (as others have suggested) would go a long way to
addressing this.
As a packager outside of the CPAN I want to have a good idea if we can
redistribute the software -- legally and within project policy. Just
as dependency metadata gives me a good view into the software's
requirements, so licensing metadata gives me a good view of the
legal/policy requirements. So I end up being one of the two people
that worry about it alot :)
-Chris
--
Chris Weyl
Ex astris, scientia
