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What about the Artistic License?

Posted by Cliff on from the yes-there-is-life-beyond-the-GPL dept.

Swordfish asks: "Despite the avid discussion of the merits and vulnerabilities of the GNU lincense, almost no one discusses the Perl Artistic License in slashdot. Why is there so little discussion of the Artistic License? It seems to me that the GNU License allows forking, but all forks must be free. The Artistic License seem to allow commercial, closed-source forks. But if preventing forks is important, GPL doesn't seem to stop it. So why not just use the Artistic License? Then the authors can some day make money out of a commercial fork if they need to pay the bills!"

2 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Because of Larry? by DanaL · · Score: 5

    I think one reason may be that Larry Wall (and the Perl community in general) don't seem to focus on the license. The FSF has an ethical/political agenda that their license encourages, so they have to advertise it. It also happens that licensing ends up being on of the points in the BSD flame wars.

    If asked about the merits of Artistic License, Larry would probably just tell you that there's more than one way to do it :)

    Dana

  2. The Greatest Gift of All by Tom+Christiansen · · Score: 5
    I can't think of any restriction on "freedom" in the AL that wouldn't also constitute criminal fraud. For example, making an incompatible version that no longer compiles standard Perl programs, yet continuing to pretend that this is merely the standard Perl. This is what Larry was most trying to avoid, because this very thing did in fact really happen to him once before (albeit with a different program). He caught a lot of flak because of this unpleasantry. The burnt child fears fire, and all that.

    The AL certainly doesn't purport to stop you from adding your own extensions. And if you do that, it certainly doesn't tell you under what conditions you can or cannot distribute or charge for this work, nor does it say anything about whether you must provide source for your own work. (Actually, it says that it doesn't say that. :-) That would be wicked because it would mean trying to exert control over some other software besides the original; that is, stuff that whoever issued the licence didn't themself write. I don't even know whether it's legal, but it's certainly not programmer-friendly.

    As I dimly understand these matters, Larry just doesn't want you to write something and then pretend that it was Larry who really wrote it. I don't blame him, and I'd be surprised if anybody did. I doubt you'd want somebody other than a legitimate owner of that name putting "written by [your name here]" all over their own software.

    fraud, not about restricting anybody's freedom. I hardly see these two matters as alternate faces of the same issue, but perhaps some people do.

    If you intend to make your software as useful as it can be to as many people as you can, then you should make it free software. Which is a terrible word, because of word games from the FSF. I mean free as in "gift". As in "free of restrictions" or as in "no strings attached". There are plenty of licences out there that do this. Short licences are better than long ones. The best license is "do as thou wilt".

    Here's one that's been floating around:

    You may use, modify, distribute, and sell this program in any way you wish, provided you do not restrict others from doing the same.
    And here's another:
    You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but is not required.

    As you see, a free licence is simple, to the point, and generous. It is not an insidious imposition of your person moral choices upon others. If you decide their choices for them a priori, they can make no moral decision. There is no goodness in being automata. You must let people choose for themselves.

    Some people prefer to install poison-pills in their licences. Usually, this poison pill is about using the software to make money with. Sleepycat Software has that, the GPL has that, and so do lots of others. I suppose some selfish people have good reasons for this, but let's not be pretending that software with a poison-pill in it is somehow "free", or that it does the most good. It doesn't. A selfish poison pill tries to make sure that the original authors' socio-economic-political dogma gets spread through the world at the cost of helping fewer people. "Use" licences like this hamper code reuse and hurt programmers. A gift, on the other hand, comes without a price tag on it.

    Every author has to make up their own mind here. I personally prefer software freely given away--without restrictions, without legislated morality, without poison pills, without any agenda beyond trying to help to make the world a better place. The AL seems to do a good job at that.

    Try, please, to remember what the greatest gift of all is. If you know what it is and why, then you'll understand. If you do not, then I'm not sure I can convince you. But the answer is charity.