Artistic license (also known as art licenselo, historical license, dramatic license, poetic license, narrative license, licentia poetica, or simply license) is a colloquial term, sometimes a euphemism, used to denote the distortion of fact, alteration of the conventions of grammar or language, or rewording of pre-existing text made by an artist in the name of art.
In British English, "license" is a verb, the noun "licence". To a British reader, the article refers to artistic licence.
The artistic license may also refer to the ability of an artist to apply smaller distortions, such as a poet ignoring some of the minor requirements of grammar for poetic effect. For example, Mark Antony's "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears" from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar would technically require the word "and" before "countrymen", but the conjunction "and" is omitted to preserve the rhythm of iambic pentameter (the resulting conjunction is called an asyndetic tricolon). Conversely, on the next line, the end of "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him" has an extra syllable because omitting the word "him" would make the sentence unclear, but adding a syllable at the end would not disrupt the meter. Both of these are examples of artistic license.
The Artistic License (version 1.0) is a software license used for certain free and open source software packages, most notably the standard implementation of the Perl programming language and most CPAN modules, which are dual-licensed under the Artistic License and the GNU General Public License (GPL). The original Artistic License was written by Larry Wall. The name of the license is a reference to the concept of artistic license.
The terms of the Artistic License 1.0 were at issue in a 2007 federal district court decision in the US, which suggested that FOSS-like licenses could only be enforced through contract law rather than through copyright law, in contexts where contract damages would be difficult to establish. On appeal, a federal appellate court "determined that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions".
The case was remanded to the District Court which did not apply the superior court's criteria (on the grounds that in the interim, the Supreme Court had changed the applicable law). However, this left undisturbed the finding that a free and open source license nonetheless has economic value.
I have the sweetest of sights, you've got to know it
It's turned me sideways
I had some fire in my eyes once you got me going
It's slipping south and out my mouth
Rest easy tonight cuz I'm starting to write it down
Somehow saying the things that your ears won't believe
Is all for the principle
I had the flattest of side, that's all I'm showing
I took those walls off
I am from left to the right, ripped, round, and roaring
From safe and sound to proud and loud
Rest easy tonight cuz I'm starting to write it down
Somehow saying the things that your ears won't believe
Is all for the principle
Rest easy tonight, yeah, cuz I'm starting to, I'm starting to
Rest easy tonight cuz I'm starting to write it down
Somehow saying the things that your ears won't believe
I'll try not to scream if you're trying to sleep
It's all based on the principle