I. Overview

The original Artistic License was written by Larry Wall and was used by Perl. Since the original version has some loopholes that may allow users to circumvent the obligatory requiments of the license, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been criticizing that it is not a free software license.

The Artistic 2.0 (https://dev.perl.org/perl6/rfc/346.html) was later brought up in response to the Perl community’s requests of interpreting the license. This version is generally deemed as a free software license. The Artistic 2.0 was written by Bradley Kuhn, who works for FSF, and was adopted by the standard Perl implementation when version 6 was released. However, the Artistic 2.0 is not a free software license approved by Open Source Initiative (OSI).

There also exists a “Clarified Artistic License” (https://www.statistica.unimib.it/utenti/dellavedova/software/artistic2.html), which is also a free software license, currently being used by the SNEeSe and FakeNES emulators.

 

II. Current Status

The Artistic License is currently being used by the standard Perl implementation, CPAN modules and Parrot, which are dual-licensed under the Artistic and the GNU General Public License (GPL). Version 6 of Perl has adopted the Artistic 2.0.

III. Rights and Duties

  1. Rights

    (1) The licensee may make and give away verbatim copies of the source form of the Standard Version of software without restriction.

    (2) The licensee may apply bug fixes, portability fixes and other modifications derived from the public domain or from the copyright holder. A software modified in such a way shall still be considered the Standard Version.

    (3) The licensee may otherwise modify his copy of this software in any way.

    (4) The licensee may distribute the softwarein object code or executable form.

    (5) The licensee may charge a reasonable copying fee for any distribution of this software. The licensee may also charge any fee he chooses for support of this software. He may also, of course, choose not to charge any fee.

    (6) The program may be sold commercially.

  2. Duties

    (1) The licensee must duplicate all of the original copyright notices and associated disclaimers.

    (2) The licensee must insert a prominent notice in each changed file stating how and when he changed that file, and must do at least one of the following:

        (A) place the modifications in the public domain or otherwise make them freely available, such as by posting said modifications to Usenet or an equivalent medium, or placing the modifications on a major archive site such as ftp.uu.net, or by allowing the copyright holder to include the modifications in the Standard Version of the software.

        (B) use the modified software only within the licensee’s corporation or organization.

        (C) rename any non-standard executables so the names do not conflict with standard executables, which must also be provided, and provide a separate manual page for each non-standard executable that clearly documents how it differs from the Standard Version.

        (D) make other distribution arrangements with the copyright holder.

    (3) Licensee may distribute this software in object code or executable form, provided she/he do at least one of the following.

        (A) distribute with instructions on where to get the Standard Version.

        (B) accompany the distribution with the machine-readable source of the software with the modifications.

        (C) accompany any non-standard executables with their corresponding Standard Version executables, giving the non-standard executables non-standard names, and clearly documenting the differences in manual pages (or equivalent), together with instructions on where to get the Standard Version.

        (D) make other distribution arrangements with the copyright holder.

    (4) The licensee may not claim the ownership of this software.

IV. Other Important Features

  1. There are some loopholes in the Artistic that may allow users to circumvent the obligatory requiments of the license. For instance, provisions in article 5 may cause the outcome that using or selling the Artistic licensed program alone is not permitted, but selling the software containing it is possible

  2. Although the Artistic requires the users to make free use of the modified software possible, there still exists a loophole in article 8, which allows the users to circumvent the requiment and make it a proprietary program or to release only part of the program to the public domain. Note, however, that article 8 has been removed in some versions.