Re: 01/01: gnu: Add perl-inline-c.

[Nils Gillmann <ng0@n0.is>]

Mark H Weaver transcribed 826 bytes:
> Nils Gillmann <ng0@n0.is> writes:
> 
> >> > Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
> >> >
> >> >> roel@gnu.org (Roel Janssen) skribis:
> >> >>
> >> >>> +    (license (package-license perl))))
> >> >>
> >> >> Could you use (license perl-license) instead?  It doesn’t make any
> >> >> difference in this case but it’s generally “safer” (see (guix
> >> >> licenses)).
> >
> > Can you tell me why it is safer to say perl-license instead of package-license perl?
> 
> I'm not a laywer, but if a future version of 'perl' were released under
> a different license, I strongly doubt that this would retroactively
> change the licenses of any earlier works.  That's exactly what would
> happen in Guix if we write (license (package-license perl)) and then
> later change the 'license' field of the 'perl' package.
> 
>        Mark
> 

Hm, but this is just our specification, metadata about a package.
This doesn't affect the reality of the package distribution.
If the license of perl itself changes we would just have made a mistake.
We can not be held accountable for mistakes in pointing out a 
license, at least that is my understanding. I guess we just are
trying to prevent licensing mistakes in the future for the hypothetical
case that perl ever changes its license?