On Sun, 14 Jan 2001, David Grove wrote:
> 1. What if a company, ANY company, whether through collusion or by any
> other means, historically has had, currently has, or in the future will
> have, the ability to disregard the perl license mechanism as it stands
> because of questionable "grammar", or the spirit of the licenses because
> of unstated "spirit"? (Forget for a moment that it's now been discussed as
> historical fact, and keep it in the abstract.)
That does seem to be a good argument for tightening up the AL, which has
been discussed and submitted to Larry as an RFC, I believe.
> 2. What if a company, ANY company, hires key members of whatever governing
> Perl body exists, for the specific purpose of affecting public opinion
> about that company and controlling the development of the Perl language;
> and that company can affect public opinion concerning itself and its
> actions due to control of "public" media; and that company can affect
> elite (not elitist) opinions due to misguided devotion to those key
> members?
This seems to me to be a problem of the community, rather than a license.
If members of the community working on the core of Perl allow themselves
to be bought and sold, _AND_ nobody else in the community complains, then
we've gotten what we deserve. I would suggest that the proper way to
handle this is for the community to be self-policing. If someone in a
position of influence in the community is obviously acting in the best
interests of their employer (without taking into account the community's
interests) then they should be asked to leave the community.
I just don't see how this particular problem could be solved through
licensing.
-dave
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