Joshua Megerman writes: > I'm a new member of PAUSE, looking to upload my first module.
Hi Josh. Thanks for sharing with the Perl community. > 1. I have developed a module that provides an XS interface to the WMI > library (libasync_wmi_lib.so) that is generated by building the Zenoss WMI > software and provides a method of calling the WMI client without forking > to use the wmic binary. My initial inclination was to just call the > module WMIClient, but I'm starting to think that WMI::Client or some other > name would be better. The only 2 modules I currently see on CPAN that > provide similar functionality are DBD::WMI and Win32::WMIC, both of which > collect and parse the output of `wmic`, which is what my module is > designed to avoid. Suggestions on the best way to name it would be > greatly appreciated. After reading that, I'm afraid I'm still unclear on what your module does; WMI isn't something I've heard of before. If it's something only of use with Windows, then putting under the Win32:: namespace would be useful, to clearly demark that. Using a suffix ::Client is probably better than Client, if you think a suffix is needed at all. Could an equivalent ::Server module ever be uploaded? Or are all users of WMI effectively clients of it, so ::Client is redundant. > 2. Said module currently has 1 function, wmiclient, which I was planning > on exporting by default. I see that it's generally recommended not to do > that, Make uses import the function explicitly. If you later regret that decision, you could change to exporting it by default. Whereas if you initially export it by default, you're stuck with continuing to do that in later versions, so you don't break code of people relying on it. > 3. The module uses several chunks of C code from the WMI package itself, > which are distributed under the GPL. My initial license thought was to > distribute the .xs file as GPL with the rest of the module package under > the same terms as Perl itself, but I don't know if that's a valid > licensing model. Can I do that, or do I need to distribute the entire > module as GPL (which is OK with me). Is this a problem for distribution > via CPAN? Distributing the entire thing as GPL is certainly fine by Cpan, and would definitely comply with the WMI package's terms. You could put a note in the doc asking people to contact you if they would find your module more useful under a different licence. That way you can postpone researching the matter further until somebody does (or possibly never). Cheers Smylers -- New series of TV puzzle show 'Only Connect' (some questions by me) Mondays at 20:30 on BBC4, or iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/onlyconnect
