Re: Re: Re: Debian removed perlreftut

[Anonymous Monk]

Right, because its obviously much more important to keep Perl licensially pure than to provide a manpage that is helpful to users.

That's exactly right. Avoiding legal troubles is always preferable to helping "users", especially since perlref (and related manpages) already provide the workings of refrence syntaxt.

[jryan]

That is absolutely ridiculous. What good is even the most legally solid piece of software if no one can use it? I think you might want to re-evaluate your priorities as to why are you involved with open source to begin with.

[Abigail-II]

What good is even the most legally solid piece of software if no one can use it?

Actually, the less restrictions on software, the more people can use it. Public domain code is the least restrictive, and it means anyone can do anything with it. perlreftut has more restrictions, and so less people can use it.

Abigail

[Anonymous Monk]

<mode type="RMS">

Public domain code is the least restrictive

In and of itself, yes. However, some may argue that in the long term it contributes to an environment that creates more restrictions and slows development.

Just thought I'd add that in, if it wasn't already obvious to some :)

</mode>

[jryan]

Right, I wasn't arguing that the perlreftut manpage did not have a restrictive license. I'm arguing that the Debian group has lost its mind so far that they are essentially *looking* for things to hang.

perlreftut states that it may be packaged with Perl, and Perl happens to be packaged with Debian. The spirit of the license is still being upheld. However, this doesn't seem to be good enough for the overzelous; ones who seem to care more about licensing issues surrounding software than the software itself.