ActivePerl, Licensing and PAR

[rinceWind]

Reading the threads on use.perl relating to the announcement posted today, it was suggested that distributing applications built with ActivePerl using PAR requires permission from ActiveState.

Whilst I'm not (yet) actually publishing perl apps for Windows this way, I've always considered that this was acceptable within Perl's licence terms, and those of ActivePerl by implication.

The page in ActivePerl's shipped documentation reads:

Licensing

The ActivePerl Package is covered by the ActiveState Community License.

The source code used in the ActivePerl Package comprises of both Open Source and proprietary software components.

All the Open Source components used in the ActivePerl Package are distributed by their original authors under the same licensing terms as Perl. The following is a full list of such components:

• Perl
• Bundled Perl modules
  • Archive-Tar
  • Archive-Zip
  • Compress-Zlib
  • Data-Dump
  • Digest-HMAC
  • Digest-MD2
  • Digest-MD4
  • Digest-MD5
  • Digest-SHA1
  • File-CounterFile
  • Font-AFM
  • HTML-Parser
  • HTML-TagSet
  • HTML-Tree
  • libnet
  • libwww-perl
  • libwin32
  • MD5
  • MIME-Base64-Scripts
  • SOAP-Lite
  • Term-ReadLine-Perl
  • TermReadKey
  • Text-Autoformat
  • Text-Reform
  • Tk
  • Unicode-String
  • URI
  • XML-Parser
  • XML-Simple

ActiveState Tool Corp., has chosen to use all Open Source content in the ActivePerl Package under the terms of the Artistic License.

All other components included in the ActivePerl Package are original works of ActiveState Tool Corp., and may be used under the terms of the ActiveState Community License.

To my mind, this would suggest it is OK to distribute applications with PAR, including perl.dll, but IANAL. If ActivePerl is restricted in this way, CamelPack et al would be most welcome.

Could someone please advise whether this is the case.

[JamesNC]

Why don't you email ActiveState? I would direct this question directly to them and not this forum. PAR is a free alternative to some of the commercially sold tools ActiveState sells, namely PDK (PerlDevKit), so I can see them adding terms to their copyright that would protect their work from being included in works distributed externally (presumbably for a profit). If you are not going to keep it in your organzation, then you can always purchase PDK Deployment Tools and use PerlApp to build your app, else, if you want to save the $145, build your own Perl distribution and use PAR with that.

[TGI]

I did contact AS for clarification on this issue, and got no reply.

PDK is a useful tool, as is PAR; I'd hate to be forced to give either of them up. For my particular app, the PDK package starts noticeably faster than the PAR package--that was enough to justify the expense for me.

I would never have experimented with packaging perl apps like this if PAR wasn't available. AS sold me a license of PDK because I made a decision based on my evaluation and successful use of PAR.

My good will toward AS would be pretty much wiped out if they pulled a licensing maneuver and banned use of PAR with ActivePerl.

[audreyt]

As libperl and the other Perl modules are under Artistic license, distributing it with "pp" is okay: see http://search.cpan.org/dist/PAR/script/pp#COPYRIGHT for details.

[Daruma]

I don't know that there is a direct correlation, but it is interesting that the GPLv3 licensing debates are happening as companies like ActiveState are beginning to reposition their own interpretation of how their products are able to be licensed.

[randyk]

There are certain modules distributed with ActivePerl, notably the ActivePerl::* and ActiveState::* modules, that are covered by the ActiveState Community License. You should probably contact ActiveState to clarify this issue if your par-built application included distribution of any of these modules.

[spiritway]

As I read the licenses, you should be OK to publish works that you created using ActiveState tools. However, since I'm not the one who gets into trouble if I'm wrong, you would be better off checking with the company itself. Even then you could theoretically have problems, since whoever answers might not have authority to speak on the subject. Still, if you troubled to ask, and someone there gave you the OK, it would go far to protecting you.

[anisotropic]

Hi, I work for ActiveState, and I think I can (hopefully) clear this up.

The ActiveState Community License is not designed or intended to restrict packaging Perl applications using utilities such as Perlapp, PAR, or perl2exe. Specifically, we do not have a problem with people packaging their applications in this way using the parts of ActivePerl that are licensed under the Artistic license ( core Perl and the bundled CPAN modules that are included ).

There are some restrictions related to ActivePerl, but these are not intended to restrict packaging applications. They are in fact intended to restrict the following:

• re-packaging / re-branding ActivePerl in any way
• redistributing any of the proprietary Activeperl features eg PerlScript, PerlIS, PerlEx, etc.
• redistributing ActivePerl as a whole without an OEM license in place.

It is not our intention to use licensing as a way to force people to use Perlapp; we would rather people buy the PDK instead because it is awesome. =)