Artistic License 1.0 The original Artistic License was written by
Larry Wall. The name of the license is a reference to the concept of
artistic license. Whether or not the original Artistic License is a
free software license is largely unsettled. The
Free Software Foundation explicitly called the original Artistic License a non-free license, criticizing it as being "too vague; some passages are too clever for their own good, and their meaning is not clear". The FSF recommended that the license not be used on its own, but approved the common AL/GPL
dual-licensing approach for Perl projects. In response to this,
Bradley Kuhn, who later worked for the Free Software Foundation, made a minimal redraft to clarify the ambiguous passages. This was released as the
Clarified Artistic License and was approved by the FSF. It is used by the
Paros Proxy, the
JavaFBP toolkit and
NcFTP. The terms of the Artistic License 1.0 were at issue in
Jacobsen v. Katzer in the initial 2009 ruling by the
United States District Court for the Northern District of California declared that
FOSS-like licenses could only be enforced through
contract law rather than through
copyright law, in contexts where contract damages would be difficult to establish. On appeal, a
federal appellate court "determined that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions". The case was remanded to the District Court, which did not apply the superior court's criteria on the grounds that, in the interim, the governing Supreme Court precedent applicable to the case had changed. However, this left undisturbed the finding that a free and open-source license nonetheless has economic value. Jacobsen ultimately prevailed in 2010, and the Case established a new standard making terms and conditions under Artistic License 1.0 enforceable through copyright statutes and relevant precedents.
Artistic License 2.0 In response to the
Request for Comments (RFC) process for improving the licensing position for
Raku, Kuhn's draft was extensively rewritten by
Roberta Cairney and
Allison Randal for readability and legal clarity, with input from the Perl community. This resulted in the
Artistic License 2.0, which has been approved as both a
free software and
open source license. The Artistic license 2.0 is also notable for its excellent
license compatibility with other FOSS licenses due to a
relicensing clause, a property other licenses like the GPL lack. It has been adopted by some of the
Raku implementations, the
Mojolicious framework and
npm. It is also used by the
SNEeSe emulator, which was formerly licensed under the Clarified Artistic License. The
OSI recommends that all developers and projects licensing their products with the Artistic License adopt Artistic License 2.0. == See also ==