| Subject: | Make Artistic_2_0 the new default license |
While Perl 5 itself uses the GPL v1 / Artistic 1.0 dual license, it was
written almost 20 years ago, and is considerably outdated. Larry Wall
originally wrote the dual license because he wasn't a lawyer and wasn't
sure if his Artistic 1.0 license would have the legal strength to hold
up in court. So, he wrote in the dual license with GPL as a way of
carrying that support, in case the Artistic license didn't work.
Since then, A1.0 has been put to the test in a court case (Jacobsen v.
Katzer), and while the court did establish that the conditions of the
Artistic License are "enforceable copyright conditions", certain legal
gaps and confusions in the language existed in the 1.0 license. Since
then, the A2.0 license has been created to fill those gaps, clarify and
update the language, and add in input from legal channels and the Perl
community.
The Artistic 2.0 license is really what Larry wanted back in 1993. It's
used by Parrot, some Perl 6 implementations, and I think it's the most
popular non-Perl5 license on CPAN. We should really be encouraging the
rest of the Perl community to stop using this 20 year old dual license,
and start using one with a better legal backing. The A2.0 license is
still completely compatible with everything else, and unlike GPL, it
does not enforce copylefting for code forks.