[Nagiosplug-devel] Plugin licensing

[Ton Voon]

On 19 Jul 2007, at 12:02, Gavin Carr wrote:

> Just to add another wrinkle to the discussion, on the perl side of  
> things
> the Nagios::Plugin perl module (and hence plugins that use _that_, I
> guess) are licensed under the standard Perl licence (that was you,  
> Ton,
> right?), which is to say it's dual-licensed (at the user's choice)  
> under
> both GPL and the Perl Artistic Licence. My IANAL understanding is that
> the Perl Artistic Licence is somewhere between the GPL and BSD  
> licences
> in terms of restrictions and freedom?

I have to admit, I don't get the differences between the Artistic  
license and the GPL.

FSF suggest not to use the Artistic license except for perl code:  
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#PerlLicense

And in their FAQ, they explicitly say that using GPL'd perl modules  
mean the overall program must be GPL'd:
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#IfInterpreterIsGPL

I don't have a firm opinion on the licencing of the perl modules.

Off the record, I think there's less of a concern with perl (or  
indeed, any interpreted language) because, while you may not have the  
right to change the code, the ability to do so is possible (which is  
not the case with binary distributions).

Ton

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