Ben Tilly wrote:
> My statement several times now is that I don't care what you do if you
> don't call it perl, and I have even given examples (oraperl and perlex) of
> people who did exactly that.
> The only concern is if you call it perl (embrace), it is not perl
> (extend), and your goal is to confuse people about what perl is
> (extinguish). Go look at what Microsoft tried with Kerberos and Java if
> you have any questions about what it is that I object to.
I understand Ben's point here, and I think it's a good one. It would be
useful to make sure that we can thwart efforts to "embrace and extend" Perl.
However, ensuring that "Perl is always Perl", and that someone doesn't
"embrace and extend" is difficult thing to do with copyright law, if not
impossible. Thus, I don't think trying to do it with a copyright license,
such as the Artistic License, is the best approach.
I believe this problem is actually best solved by putting a trademark on the
word "Perl". Then, the trademark license would say, in legal-eze: "You
can't use the name 'Perl' in the name of your product unless it includes the
unmodified implementation of perl".
For verification, I think this is an excellent question to pose to a lawyer:
"What is the best way to ensure that if a company or other entity calls
something Perl, that it is definitely Perl as we know it. Should we try
to do it in a copyright license, or is trademark law a better approach?"
I will try to run this by Eben, if I can get some of his cycles (he is
helping pro-bono, so this might be hard). If anyone else has some lawyer
friends who are willing to help, that'd be great.
--
Bradley M. Kuhn - http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn
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