>On Jun 12, 2011, at 13:14, Marc Espie <es...@nerim.net> wrote: > >> On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 10:13:34AM -0500, Chris Bennett wrote: >>> I ran into a module on cpan that the author says is licensed as: >>> >>> You can use this module freely. (Someone complained this is too vague. >>> So, more precisely: do whatever you want with it, but be warned that >>> terrible things will happen to you if you use it badly, like for >>> sending spam, or ...?) >> >> Well, he's not actually forbidding any kind of use, does he ? >> >> So it's free. > >Not quite. It is the opposite. You have to explicitly disclaim parts if the >copyright (redistribution, modification etc). > >Saying it is free doesn't make it so.
Marc is incorrect. Marco is correct. The word "free" means too little. It may eventually be subject to interpretation by someone, and they may not come to the same conclusions that you come to now. In the world of copyright, the best way to avoid this problem is by being exact and clear. This is what we in our own new code: * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. The words "Permission", "use", "copy", "modify", "distribute" are very clear. So are others words in the above sentence. Simplifying it to the word "free" ... is frankly impossible. That particular cpan module author is being unclear, and he is attempting to add morals to his software. Copyright does not understand moral codes. A judge or jury interpreting it later may believe that it was not free, after all. To avoid such problems, please mark that code as non-free. If that author clearly wants his software to be free in ways we can clearly identify, he's got to "use the right words".
