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<h1>Perl Licensing</h1>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
Perl5 is Copyright (C) 1993-2005, by Larry Wall and others.
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It is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of either:
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a) the <A HREF="gpl1.html">GNU General Public License</A> as
published by the <A HREF="http://www.fsf.org/">Free Software
Foundation; either <A HREF="gpl1.html">version 1</A>, or (at your
option) any <A
HREF="http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html#GNUGPL">later
version</A>, or
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b) the <A HREF="artistic.html">"Artistic License"</A>.
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<BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="background: #dddddd; padding: 10px; border: solid
black 1px; text-align: justify; ">
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For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public
License, my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is
that no Perl script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you
explicitly put said script under the terms of the GPL yourself.
</P>
<P>
Furthermore, any object code linked with perl does not
automatically fall under the terms of the GPL, provided such
object code only adds definitions of subroutines and variables,
and does not otherwise impair the resulting interpreter from
executing any standard Perl script. I consider linking in C
subroutines in this manner to be the moral equivalent of defining
subroutines in the Perl language itself. You may sell such an
object file as proprietary provided that you provide or offer to
provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General Public
License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input to
the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping
of a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you
provide or offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the
GPL. (The fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the
same binary file is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.)
</P>
<P>
This is my interpretation of the GPL. If you still have concerns
or difficulties understanding my intent, feel free to contact me.
Of course, the Artistic License spells all this out for your
protection, so you may prefer to use that.
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<I> -- Larry Wall</I>
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