On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis@pitrou.net> wrote:
Le Tue, 17 Sep 2013 11:37:48 -0400,
Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> a écrit :

> On 2.7, >>> license() return a text that includes a complete list of
> releases from 1.6 to 2.7 and stops there
>      Release         Derived     Year        Owner       GPL-
>                      from                                compatible?
> (1)
>
>      0.9.0 thru 1.2              1991-1995   CWI         yes
>      1.3 thru 1.5.2  1.2         1995-1999   CNRI        yes
>      1.6             1.5.2       2000        CNRI        no
>      2.0             1.6         2000        BeOpen.com  no
> ...
>      2.6.5           2.6.4       2010        PSF         yes
>      2.7             2.6         2010        PSF         yes
>
> Was it intentional to stop with 2.7 and not continue with 2.7.1, etc?
>
> On 3.3.2, the 2.x list ends with 2.6.5 and never mentions 2.7.
> Intentional? It then jumps back to 3.0 and ends with the 'previous'
> release, 3.3.1. Should 3.3.2 be included in the 3.3.2 list?
>
> ...
>      2.6.4           2.6.3       2009        PSF         yes
>      2.6.5           2.6.4       2010        PSF         yes
>      3.0             2.6         2008        PSF         yes
>      3.0.1           3.0         2009        PSF         yes
> ...
>      3.2.4           3.2.3       2013        PSF         yes
>      3.3.0           3.2         2012        PSF         yes
>      3.3.1           3.3.0       2013        PSF         yes

I don't really understand why the releases should be manually listed.
Is it some kind of defensive coding?

Worse, it's superstition based on myth.

IIRC this table was added when a few core Python developers including myself left CNRI in 2000. We had a bit of an argument about the license (not too much though -- in the end things came out alright). Some lawyer at CNRI thought it was a good idea to record a release history like this with the license, as a defense against whatever claims of ownership to the code someone else might suddenly come up with. Since all I wanted was to get out of there while causing them minimal upset, I told them I'd comply. But that's over 13 years ago now, and I'm not sure if it ever made sense (the internet is a different place than CNRI's lawyers envisioned). Only the top 10 of so lines of the table are in the least interesting (note that it describes a graph). I propose that we truncate the table and add a note saying that all following releases are owned by the PSF, GPL-compatible, and derived from previous PSF-owned and GPL-compatible releases. That should do until the PSF goes out of business (which I hope will never happen -- this is one reason why I wish the conferences were run by a separate entity, to avoid a conference bankruptcy from risking Python's continued open-source status).

--
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)