If The Worst of Us Wins, The Best of Us Surely Will

Post Syndicated from Bradley M. Kuhn original http://ebb.org/bkuhn/blog/2008/08/16/artistic.html

There has
been much
chatter

and coverage
about the court decision related to the Artistic License decision last
week. Having spent a decade worrying about the Artistic License, I was
surprised and relieved to see this decision.

One of the first tasks I undertook in the late 1990s in the world of
Software Freedom licenses were issues surrounding the Artistic License.
My first Software Freedom community was the Perl one, but my second was
the licensing wonks. Therefore, I walked the line for many years, as I
considered the poor drafting of the Original Artistic License. As the
Perl6 process started in 2000, I chaired the Licensing Committee, and
wrote all of the licensing RFCs
in the Perl6
process
, including
RFC 211, which collected all the historical arguments about bad drafting
of the Artistic License and argued that we change the Artistic License
.

Last year, I was silent about the lower court decision, because I’d
known for years that the Original Artistic License was a poorly drafted
and confusing license. I frankly was not surprised that a court had
considered it problematic. Of course, I was glad for the appeal, and that
there was a widely supported amicus brief arguing that the Artistic
License should be treated appropriately as a copyright license.
However, I had already prepared myself to live with the fact that the my
greatest licensing fears had come true: the most poorly drafted FLOSS
license had been the first for a USA court to consider, and that court had
seen what we all saw — a license that was confusing and could not be
upheld due to lack of clarity.

I was overjoyed last week to see
that the
Federal Circuit ruled
that even a poorly drafted copyright license
like that must be taken seriously and that the copyright
holder could seek remedies under copyright law. Now that I have
seen this decision, I feel confident that the rest of our licenses will
breeze through the courts, should the need arise. We’ve been arguing for
a decade that the Artistic license is problematic, and even Larry Wall
(its author) admitted that his intent wasn’t necessarily to draft a good
license but to inspire people to contact him for additional permissions
outside the GPL. Nevertheless, he drafted a license that the USA courts
clearly see as a valid copyright license. The bottom bar has been set,
and since all our other licenses are much clearer, it will be smooth
sailing here on out.

(Please note, if you are a fan of the Artistic
License, the
Artistic License 2.0
is a much better option and is
recommended. Despite the decision, we should still cease using the
Original Artistic License now that we have 2.0.)