[LEGAL-86] Artistic License / CPAN dependencies

• Type: Question
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Abandoned
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Marvin Humphrey
• Created: 09/Nov/10 19:30
• Updated: 27/Oct/11 20:55
• Resolved: 27/Oct/11 20:55

Description

The Apache Lucy Incubator podling is working to pare down its list of
dependencies, but there are two CPAN distributions which we would like to
put off replacing for the time being (Parse::RecDescent and JSON::XS).
These two distributions are both licensed, as is common for CPAN modules,
under the "same terms as Perl itself". Perl's licensing is here:

http://dev.perl.org/licenses/

We do not wish to bundle these CPAN distributions with Lucy, but instead
specify them as prerequisites. We assert that our usage of the modules in
question falls under the terms of the Artistic License and not the GPL.

Lucy interfaces with these modules in three places:

• At build time (Parse::RecDescent).
• Within Lucy itself at runtime (JSON::XS).
• Within sample/cookbook code (Parse::RecDescent).

We have two questions:

• Is it acceptable for code released under the Apache License 2.0 to have
  a non-optional dependency on code which is licensed under the Artistic
  License?
• Is it acceptable to classify these modules as "system dependencies",
  which the user is expected to install?