[ccan] ISC license?

[Tim Post]

On Wed, 2010-10-20 at 13:35 -0400, Greg London wrote:
> I'm not sure what ccan's overall goal is but according to cpan
> 
> http://www.cpan.org/misc/cpan-faq.html#How_is_Perl_licensed
> 
> Most of the modules on cpan are licensed gnu gpl or perl artistic.
> Maybe ccan might want to consider a suggestion to contributers to
> keep, if at all possible, licenses to a few common ones (and list
> those common licenses).
> 
> There really are only a handful of different licensing goals.  And
> multiple nuances, while sometimes deathly important to the developer,
> ends up creating headaches for.all the downstream users because of
> incompatibilities.

I agree with you, mostly.

I don't see why licenses can't be resolved just like dependencies in the
not too distant future. Most OSI approved licenses are compatible,
however the most restrictive license in the mix prevails.

It is entirely possible to build and re-distribute libccan-x.x fully
under the newer (3/2 clause) BSD license, for instance, but doing so
would exclude certain modules. 

A GPL2+ build would work the same, but result in (nearly) every module
being included.

A GPL3+ build would build most (if not all, I have not checked on new
modules lately) modules.

Then, there are bad licenses that started with good intentions. That is
and has been a problem.

As long as those builds had their own namespace, there really is no
issue to speak of.

On another note, 'public domain' code can be more problematic than
anything depending on your country and copyright law.

If I am working on something and I encounter a problem that entails a
wheel that I am not interested in re-inventing, the first thing that
comes to mind is "I need something that works and is available under an
equally or less restrictive license than the code I'm working with"

If someone wants to publish a module under the AGPL3, great, I'd love to
study it. I don't see why license _alone_ would preclude the inclusion
of something useful? Sure, maybe I can't copy it in place and just use
it, but at least I can gain some inspiration, if nothing else :)

What remains is, I need to (potentially) exclude certain licenses.

Cheers!
--Tim