Another pass at redrafting the Artistic License

Ben Tilly ben_tilly at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 15 07:41:30 UTC 2000


(To the folks on the license-discuss list.)  As you may know,
Perl is currently undergoing a rewrite.  As part of this
rewrite licensing is being reviewed, and we are attempting
to come up with an Artistic License that is (*ahem*) on
somewhat better grounds than the current one.  This is my
current attempt but IANAL and I desperately need some legal
types who are willing to comment on whether this will hold
water, whether it will meet the OSD, etc.

(To the folks on the perl6-licenses list.)  Hopefully after
this draft I will stop playing with the overall structure of
the document.  I don't seem to have succeeded in making it
shorter either, if it accomplishes some of my other goals, I
will live.  In particular while I cut some verbiage out, in
trying to cover the case where your package was derived from
*two* (or more) projects under the Artistic License some more
snuck in...

Please note in particular section 2.5.  This should give a
pretty good idea of how I want to make it possible for Larry
to resolve any licensing issues that *might* arise without
having to have everyone explicitly assign copyright to him.
Remember that I am looking for ways to give him flexibility
without paperwork...  Before I push that idea further I
really need feedback on whether this is going to fly, both
legally and in terms of what it requires from contributers.
Suggestions on what kind of defined policy would make sense
are also welcome. :-)

Cheers,
Ben

===========================================================

                   THE ARTISTIC LICENSE
               VERSION 2,  SEPTEMBER 2000

                        Preamble

The intent of this License is to state terms under which the
developers of a free software project may allow use and borrowing
from the project while retaining a semblance of artistic control
over future development.  This license may be used on its own
but is intended to be used in a dual-licensing scheme and is
likely to be incompatible with other free software licenses when
outside of a dual-licensing arrangement.

                 Terms and Conditions

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or collection of works containing a notice placed by the
copyright holder or holders licensing it in whole or in part
under the terms of this Artistic License.  The "Package" refers
to some package which thi license applies to.  A "Standard
Version" is any such work which is licensed in its entirety
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your use of the Package.  Similarly programs, library files,
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programs and libraries of the Package do not automatically fall
under any copyrights placed under this License.  Unless
otherwise restricted, they belong to whoever produced them.

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Package during operation shall fall under the copyrights of this
License if that is possible after reviewing all applicable
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produced using "undump", snapshoting internal byte code, or
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