[License-discuss] OSI license issue: Artistic license

[Ben Tilly]

There was a time when the Artistic license v1.0 was in use in many
projects in many forms.  For example at one point Ruby was under a
version, many CPAN modules are (or were) under it, many ports of those
modules to other languages, etc.  Making it worse, people who are
inclined to use the Artistic license are generally not deeply
concerned about legal matters, and so tend to display a lack of care
about the exact text.  A phenomena that you noticed the effects of.

In fact the only US court case which I am personally aware of to test
the enforceability of an open source license featured a variant the
Artistic license v1.0.  (Not sure of the exact text, the project is
now under the GPL v2.)

However it is not a popular license for new software.  (Justifiably
not, there are much better licenses available.)

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 1:01 PM, Jilayne Lovejoy
<jilayne.lovejoy at openlogic.com> wrote:
> Hello OSI!
>
> We have identified a few outstanding license list reconciliation issues
> previously and one of those came up again in the form of a request to add
> the Perl Artistic license to the SPDX License List.  I thought it might be
> helpful to review that issue again, separately, in the hopes we can come up
> with some kind of resolution.
>
> By way of reminder, here is a summary of the situation:
>
> The OSI site has explanation regarding two variations of the Artistic
> License v1.0; that is, whether clause 8 is included or not.  We have already
> all agreed that this mandates having two separate entries on the SPDX
> License List – one for each variation.
>
> The trouble is that the OSI also states that when clause 8 is included, it
> is called the Artistic (Perl) license and refers to the Perl site (see:
> http://opensource.org/licenses/Artistic-1.0).  However, the license text
> found on the Perl site (http://dev.perl.org/licenses/artistic.html) and that
> found on the OSI site are significantly different (notwithstanding clause
> 8).  A comparison document is attached here.
>
> Currently, the SPDX License List includes only the Artistic License 1.0
> (Artistic-1.0) (see: http://spdx.org/licenses/Artistic-1.0) which is the OSI
> version (with no clause 8).
>
> In a previous thread, the last comment on this issue by OSI was to ask
> whether the OSI variation occurs "in the wild."  If not, then it was
> suggested to change the OSI site to match the Perl site text.
>
> (my two cents on this is that it may be hard to say what has been found "in
> the wild," as it would be easy to conflate "Artistic LIcense 1.0" without
> realizing the OSI and Perl sites display distinct variations.  The only way
> to determine the difference would require a much closer look.  I would
> hazard to guess that these variations have been confused for each other "in
> the wild."  But I can't back that up in one direction or another at this
> time.)
>
> Some insight from a license-savyy person associated with Perl who could
> help?
>
> Proposed solutions:
>
> #1
> SPDX LIcense List adds two new licenses, as follows:
> - Artistic License 1.0 w/clause 8  |  Artistic-1.0-cl8
> - Artistic License 1.0 (Perl)  |  Artistic-1.0-Perl
>
> OSI can then choose(now, later, whenever) to update or change their listing
> (or not) as it so desires and just update the SPDX short-name identifier
> accordingly; keeping everything in order, in terms of naming and references.
>
> #2
> OSI decides how these variations should be represented, updates its site and
> then SPDX will follow suit to be consistent.
>
> #3
> ?? Another idea?
>
>
> Please let us know what you think.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jilayne Lovejoy
> SPDX Legal Team |  Co-lead
> OpenLogic, Inc.  |  Corporate Counsel
> jlovejoy at openlogic.com
>
>
>
>
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