On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 03:23:17PM +0000, hyjial wrote:

quoted text
> Hi list !

> Reading through OpenBSD's codebase, I have noticed that the code

> living

> under src/usr.sbin/pkg_add is written in Perl. Perl is distributed

> under the Artistic license, though. The latter is not as permissive

> as the BSD

> license under which monst of OpenBSD is released. No doubt

> that is the reason

> why Perl lives in src/gnu.

Well, perl lives in src/gnu by mistake, since it has little to do with

gnu, but moving it would not help anything, since it would add lots of

noise to the CVS repository.
Actually, we don't frown all that much on the Artistic licence.

It is very much free compared to the obnoxious GPL.

If you read it carefully, the only thing the Artistic licence requires you

to do is not to misrepresent the software, by changing it without renaming

it.
As far as perl goes, it's about the only language that fit the bill.

The older pkg_* were totally impossible to maintain and extend, and

I needed a sensible script language that was in base.