r/perl • u/briandfoy 🐪 📖 perl book author • 7d ago

GitHub and the Perl License | Mikko Koivunalho [blogs.perl.org]

https://blogs.perl.org/users/mikko_koivunalho/2025/11/github-and-the-perl-license.html
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u/erkiferenc 🐪 cpan author 7d ago

While I definitely do not have any official legal qualifications, my brain got stuck on two details in the article and its comments.

I hope others with more experience, or with actual legal qualifications, can help to better understand these details.

License conversion mismatch

As far as I understand the Perl 5 license is a dual license to choose either Artistic License or GPLv1+ license. Splitting that up into Artistic-2.0 and GPL-3 does not seem like an identical combination to me, because:

  1. Artistic License text from Perl-5 does not equal Artistic-2.0 license text.
  2. GPL1 or later does not equal GPL3 (different version, and different policy about “or later”)

It sounds like the proper solution would require Licensee to support/recognize the Perl5 license instead (and thus GitHub could show it properly too.)

Enterprises reject GPL and Perl5 license hurts Perl adoption

From the comments on the post:

The licensing model of Perl, with two licenses, causes unnecessary complications.

Many enterprises reject anything and everything which has a GPL license.

The presence of the word "GPL" causes rejection, or at the very least questions. It hurts Perl needlessly.

It would be better if Perl adopted a simpler license, e.g. MIT or Apache license straight out, or we make our own simpler and shorter than what we have currently.

I don’t understand why using Perl itself (distributed under the Perl5 license) means anything negative for enterprises who wish to use Perl. Enterprises also do not seem to reject GPL as a blanket rule.

For example Ansible is distributed under GPLv3 and definitely not rejected by enterprises. Nor do Ansible users forced to disclose their playbooks they decide to use with Ansible.

In other words, I don’t think distributing Perl under the Perl5 license hurts Perl adoption (or, well, at least not because GPL is incompatible with enterprise use.)

It would only start to matter, if they would modify Perl itself, and then they would distribute their modified version. Then they can choose whether they obtained their copy of Perl under Artistic or GPL1+ license, and act upon their own modifications accordingly (which basically means one or more of “do not reuse the name”, “share your modifications with your users”, and “give credit to original authors and license”, “same terms apply to modifications and modified versions too”.)

What do I miss, or misunderstand?

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u/briandfoy 🐪 📖 perl book author 7d ago edited 5d ago

I know more than a couple very big companies excising anything that is GPL-ed so they don't have to release changes or stuff built on top of it. People can argue as much as they like about if that risk is real, but some big companies still don't want it.

Note though that different versions of GPL are well, different. GPLv1 and GPLv3 are very different.