After years of discussion and legal work, TPF has released drafts of the new proposed Artistic License v 2.0 and the Perl Contributors Agreement.

The reason for the new licence is to clear up potential ambiguities and contradictions in the first version of the Artistic License while retaining Larry’s original goals for the license. (Use the code as you wish, but don’t prevent people from using the official Perl in addition to or instead of modified versions.) It should be easier to use AL2-licensed code with code under other OSI-approved licenses. Additionally, there is language related to the use and enforcement of patents.

The reason for the contributor agreement is legal indemnification for distributing the code and holding a compilation copyright on the entirety of the Perl and Parrot and Perl 6 distributions. It’s important for TPF to know where code comes from and that contributors have the right to give TPF the right to redistribute the code that they write. It’s just good sense.

TPF-president emeritus Allison Randal worked on these projects for three years. Along with the Perl trademark, these documents may be her biggest legacy — and they’re excellent next steps in the continuing reinvention of Perl and the Perl community.

use Perl; has further discussion at Artistic License 2.0 public review. You can review the documents themselves at TPF’s legal section.