1 2 Perl Kit, Version 5 3 4 Copyright (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 5 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 by Larry Wall and others 6 7 All rights reserved. 8 9 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify 10 it under the terms of either: 11 12 a) the GNU General Public License as published by the Free 13 Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any 14 later version, or 15 16 b) the "Artistic License" which comes with this Kit. 17 18 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 19 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 20 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See either 21 the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License for more details. 22 23 You should have received a copy of the Artistic License with this 24 Kit, in the file named "Artistic". If not, I'll be glad to provide one. 25 26 You should also have received a copy of the GNU General Public License 27 along with this program in the file named "Copying". If not, write to the 28 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 29 02111-1307, USA or visit their web page on the internet at 30 http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. 31 32 For those of you that choose to use the GNU General Public License, 33 my interpretation of the GNU General Public License is that no Perl 34 script falls under the terms of the GPL unless you explicitly put 35 said script under the terms of the GPL yourself. Furthermore, any 36 object code linked with perl does not automatically fall under the 37 terms of the GPL, provided such object code only adds definitions 38 of subroutines and variables, and does not otherwise impair the 39 resulting interpreter from executing any standard Perl script. I 40 consider linking in C subroutines in this manner to be the moral 41 equivalent of defining subroutines in the Perl language itself. You 42 may sell such an object file as proprietary provided that you provide 43 or offer to provide the Perl source, as specified by the GNU General 44 Public License. (This is merely an alternate way of specifying input 45 to the program.) You may also sell a binary produced by the dumping of 46 a running Perl script that belongs to you, provided that you provide or 47 offer to provide the Perl source as specified by the GPL. (The 48 fact that a Perl interpreter and your code are in the same binary file 49 is, in this case, a form of mere aggregation.) This is my interpretation 50 of the GPL. If you still have concerns or difficulties understanding 51 my intent, feel free to contact me. Of course, the Artistic License 52 spells all this out for your protection, so you may prefer to use that. 53 54-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 55 56Perl is a language that combines some of the features of C, sed, awk 57and shell. See the manual page for more hype. There are also many Perl 58books available, covering a wide variety of topics, from various publishers. 59See pod/perlbook.pod for more information. 60 61Please read all the directions below before you proceed any further, and 62then follow them carefully. 63 64Installation 65 661) Detailed instructions are in the file "INSTALL", which you should 67read if you are either installing on a system resembling Unix 68or porting perl to another platform. For non-Unix platforms, see the 69corresponding README. 70 712) Read the manual entries before running perl. 72 733) IMPORTANT! Help save the world! Communicate any problems and suggested 74patches to perlbug@perl.org so we can keep the world in sync. 75If you have a problem, there's someone else out there who either has had 76or will have the same problem. See the section on "Reporting Problems" 77in the INSTALL file. 78 79The latest versions of perl are always available on the various CPAN 80(Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) sites around the world. 81See http://www.cpan.org/src/ . 82 83 84Just a personal note: I want you to know that I create nice things like this 85because it pleases the Author of my story. If this bothers you, then your 86notion of Authorship needs some revision. But you can use perl anyway. :-) 87 88 The author. 89