On Mon Apr 9 13:09:31 2001, Robert Shiels wrote:
> A lot of you write and distribute free perl code. What do you do about
> copyright and disclaimers in the code itself. I've had a look at a few
> examples and it seems you don't really bother.
>
> I think it is probably worth doing, and we will need one for the
> NotMattsScripts project, so does anyone have a good concise copyright and
> disclaimer notice for free Perl code? I've googled around and can't find
> anything I like.
I do this:
=head1 COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2001 Marty Pauley.
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 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
b) the Perl Artistic License.
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.
=cut
The FSF site recommended this. I just use the GPL with non-perl code.
The FSF people say this:
The license of Perl.
This license is the disjunction of the Artistic license and the GNU GPL--in
other words, you can choose either of those two licenses. It qualifies as a
free software license, but it may not be a real copyleft. It is compatible with
the GNU GPL because the GNU GPL is one of the alternatives.
We recommend you use this license for any Perl package you write, to promote
coherence and uniformity in Perl programming. Outside of Perl, we urge you not
to use this license; it is better to use just the GNU GPL.
The Artistic license.
We cannot say that this is a free software license because it is too vague;
some passages are too clever for their own good, and their meaning is not
clear. We urge you to avoid using it, except as part of the disjunctive
license of Perl.
Have a look at http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html
--
Marty
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