Branch: refs/heads/blead
Home: https://github.com/Perl/perl5
Commit: 3ab3217e79262248af3c11f8194b343ddb90b690
https://github.com/Perl/perl5/commit/3ab3217e79262248af3c11f8194b343ddb90b690
Author: Zefram <[email protected]>
Date: 2023-03-03 (Fri, 03 Mar 2023)
Changed paths:
M pod/perlfilter.pod
M t/porting/customized.dat
Log Message:
-----------
pod/perlfilter.pod - replace piracy comments with something more realistic
The pod/perlfilter.pod document says "The original purpose of source
filters was to let you encrypt your program source to prevent casual
piracy.". The likening of copyright infringement to nautical hijacking
is wildly hyperbolic. Perl should not be spreading this line of
tendentious misinformation. Even without the hyperbole, it's misleading
to say that program encryption is aimed at preventing copyright
infringement: it doesn't actually impede copying of the whole file. The
things it really impedes are the understanding and editing of the
program, which are actions that are at most only loosely connected to
copyright infringement.
I suggest that the word "piracy" should be replaced with "reading",
which is both a more neutral term and a more accurate description of what
program encryption impedes. There's also a similar problem with the word
"cracker" later in the document.
The document also understates how fundamental it is that program
encryption can't fully prevent access to the real source code.
This patch fixes all of these problems.
[Note from the committer: this patch was submitted to perl5-porters via
perlbug, this message was extracted and moderately edited (mostly for
tense) for creating this patch. I also added the changes to
customized.dat, although I am not sure why that was necessary. - Yves]
