The Artistic License is a software license used for certain free software packages, most notably the standard Perl implementation, most of CPAN modules and Parrot, which are dual-licensed under the Artistic License and the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was written by Larry Wall. It has been suggested that Licensing (strategic alliance) be merged into this article or section. ... The GNU free software logo Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation, is software which can be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed without restriction. ... Perl, also Practical Extraction and Report Language (a backronym, see below) is a dynamic procedural programming language designed by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. ... CPAN is an acronym standing for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network. ... Parrot is a register-based virtual machine being developed using the C programming language and intended to run dynamic languages efficiently. ... // Licenses are granted by copyright holders to grant exceptions of copyright law to users for a work. ... The GNU logo Wikisource has original text related to this article: GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... Larry Wall (b. ...

Whether or not the original Artistic License is a free software license is largely undecided. It is often heavily criticised for being ambiguous, self-contradictory, and thus virtually impossible to interpret - perfectly representing the fields of Art and copyright law. The Free Software Foundation has gone so far to say that it is not a free software license, however, this has never been a contentious issue since all notable software that uses the original Artistic License are dual licensed along with the GPL. Generally speaking, free software license is a phrase used by the free software movement to mean any software license that meets the free software definition of the Free Software Foundation (FSF). ... Venus de Milo exhibited in the Louvre museum, France. ... The copyright symbol is used to give notice that a work is covered by copyright. ... The Free Software Foundation logo The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit organization founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... // Licenses are granted by copyright holders to grant exceptions of copyright law to users for a work. ...

There exists an Artistic License 2.0, which was written in response to a Perl community request for comments, which everyone agrees is a free software license. The license was written by Bradley Kuhn, then working for Free Software Foundation, and seems to be scheduled for adoption by the standard Perl implementation when version 6 is released. There also exists a "Clarified Artistic License", which is also a free software license, currently being used by the SNEeSe and FakeNES emulators. In internetworking and computer network engineering, Request for Comments (RFC) documents are a series of memoranda encompassing new research, innovations, and methodologies applicable to Internet technologies. ... He was Chief Executive of Free Software Foundation and is now CTO of Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). ... SNEeSe is an emulator for the Nintendo SNES console for x86 PCs. ... FakeNES is a portable, Open source NES emulator written in C, using the Allegro game library, released under the zlib/libpng license, which is compatible with the GNU GPL. It runs on any operating system that Allegro supports, such as 32-bit DOS or compatible, any version of Windows released... This article is about emulation in computer science. ...

The name of the licence is a reference to the concept of artistic licence. Artistic licence or license (US), also known as dramatic license/licence, is a colloquial term used to denote the distortion or complete ignorance of fact, or the changing of an established work that an artist may undertake in the name of art — for example, if an artist decided it was...

External links

• The Artistic License (the original Artistic License, the one which is still used by Perl and CPAN)
• The Artistic License 2.0
• The Clarified Artistic License