In the last year as a Fink maintainer (Mac OS X debian-like package
manager), I've come across a couple CPAN modules that have no license
information at all. It's very frustrating. I've submitted RT bugs,
but one of them has been fixed (thanks Ken Williams).
To encourage authors to correct this oversight, I propose a new pair
of Kwalitee tests. Both would be nice, but if either of them were
implemented, I'd be thrilled. I'd prefer that someone else implement
the test (lack of tuits), but if there is approval for the idea
without a motivated implementer I will take a hack at it.
1) has_license -- check for the presence of a file named something
like LICENSE or COPYING or COPYLEFT or GPL or ... (each test case
insensitive, with or without .txt extensions). Alternatively, the
test can be more liberal by looking for the string "copyright" in
README, *pm and *.pod.
2) has_meta_yml_license -- check for a META.yml field named
"license". Module::Build supports this.
These tests should not care which license is claimed, just that there
is a license present.
Chris
--
Chris Dolan, Software Developer, Clotho Advanced Media Inc.
608-294-7900, fax 294-7025, 1435 E Main St, Madison WI 53703
Clotho Advanced Media, Inc. - Creators of MediaLandscape Software
(http://www.media-landscape.com/) and partners in the revolutionary
Croquet project (http://www.opencroquet.org/)
