Perl Artistic License
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| Perl Artistic License | |
|---|---|
| Name | Perl Artistic License |
| Author | Larry Wall |
| Released | 1997 |
| Status | Active |
| Copyleft | Partial |
Perl Artistic License The Perl Artistic License is a software license originally authored to govern distribution and modification of the Perl programming language and related works. It was created to balance the interests of the original author with those of downstream developers, blending permissive and moral-rights provisions to influence reuse, redistribution, and derivative works across projects and organizations.
History
Larry Wall drafted the license while developing Perl and coordinating with contributors from communities such as CPAN, O'Reilly Media, TAP, PerlMonks, and early open source discussion lists. The license emerged amid contemporaneous developments like the GNU General Public License, the Berkeley Software Distribution, and debates involving entities including Free Software Foundation, Open Source Initiative, MIT, X Consortium, and vendors such as Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Adoption among projects intersected with ecosystems around Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Debian, Red Hat, and repositories run by organizations like SourceForge and later GitHub, influencing license policy discussions at institutions such as The Apache Software Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Eclipse Foundation, and Creative Commons affiliates. The license’s emergence also paralleled legal discourse in jurisdictions influenced by cases involving US Copyright Office, European Court of Justice, and national courts in United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Canada.
Terms and Conditions
The license text sets conditions covering permission to copy, modify, and redistribute software, addressing attribution practices that affected contributors from projects such as CPAN and distributions by entities like Perl Foundation. It prescribes obligations and limitations which were compared to terms in the GNU Affero General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, MIT License, BSD License, and Apache License 2.0. Authors and redistributors—ranging from individual maintainers affiliated with PerlMonks to corporate contributors from IBM, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Oracle Corporation—must consider clauses that govern statements of intent and conditions resembling moral-rights assertions encountered in litigation overseen by courts in United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and appellate panels. The text influenced contributor agreements and corporate policies at firms like Sun Microsystems and HP where legal teams coordinate with open source counsel at institutions such as Stanford University, MIT, UC Berkeley, and Yale University.
Versions and Variants
Several iterations and informal variants circulated across distributions and packaging systems including CPAN, Debian Policy, RPM Package Manager, and Homebrew. Forks and reinterpretations were discussed in forums hosted by Slashdot, Stack Overflow, LWN.net, and mailing lists run by Perl Foundation and FreeBSD Foundation. Comparisons were drawn with other license texts such as those used by NetBSD Foundation, X.Org Foundation, Apache Software Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, W3C, and projects under Eclipse Foundation. Legal clarifications and rewordings prompted commentary from counsel at Creative Commons and academics at Harvard University, Columbia University, and Oxford University.
Compatibility with Other Licenses
Compatibility debates concerned integrating code licensed under the license with code under GPLv2, GPLv3, LGPL, Apache License 2.0, MIT License, BSD License, and vendor licenses used by companies like Apple Inc. and Google. Package maintainers in distributions such as Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora Project, and Arch Linux evaluated compatibility when combining modules from CPAN with core runtimes maintained by organizations like Perl Foundation and contributors affiliated with Linux Foundation. Legal interoperability issues were raised in guidance from bodies including Open Source Initiative and litigated or analyzed by practitioners associated with firms such as DLA Piper, Baker McKenzie, and university clinics at Stanford Law School.
Adoption and Notable Use Cases
The license was used originally for Perl itself and by many CPAN modules, and it influenced licensing choices in related ecosystems such as mod_perl, Catalyst (software), DBI (Perl module), and utilities packaged by Debian and FreeBSD Ports Collection. Organizations and projects that engaged with the license include Perl Foundation, The Perl Mongers, YAPC, O’Reilly Media publications about Perl, and contributors from companies such as Booking.com, Mozilla Corporation, Amazon Web Services, Google, Facebook, and IBM who have historically released Perl-related tooling. Academic and government users at institutions like NASA, National Institutes of Health, European Space Agency, US Department of Homeland Security, UK Ministry of Defence, and research labs in Los Alamos National Laboratory encountered the license in procurement and compliance reviews.
Legal and Practical Issues
Practitioners raised questions about enforceability and interpretation in jurisdictions including United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, and India. Legal teams at corporations such as Microsoft, Oracle Corporation, IBM, and Google evaluated the license alongside policies from entities like Open Source Initiative and case precedent in courts such as the Supreme Court of the United States and national appellate courts. Package maintainers in distributions like Debian and Fedora assessed whether the license's clauses satisfied distribution criteria; similar scrutiny occurred at foundations including Apache Software Foundation and Eclipse Foundation. Practical issues include contributor agreement harmonization practices seen at GitHub, GitLab, and institutional repositories at Harvard University and MIT.