Re: Automake: use of modified Perl modules & GPL

[Russ Allbery <rra at stanford dot edu>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     Well, for grins I looked to see how you license your modules. Your
>     license/copyright statement is in the README, not the POD so after
>     the module is installed, the license statement disappears [ unless
>     the user keeps the source dir around ]. The user, in the future will
>     either need to find the source dist for that version again or email
>     the author to clarify the license terms. I don't see how this is
>     different than not stating your license explicitly in the POD.

> This is indeed a problem.  The license statement should be in the source
> files, so it can't get separated from them.  Russ, how about if you fix
> this, as a way to set a good example for everyone else?

Elaine is partly mistaken.  All of the modules I have released have, at
the top of every source file, the statement:

# Copyright <years> by Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
#
# This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the same terms as Perl itself.

She's correct that it's not also in the POD, and I do plan on fixing that
with my next round of releases, but that's a question of convenience more
than anything else.  Anyone who looked at the source or went to modify it
would see the license statement.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>