After more than four years of living with an out-of-dated license for Python, CNRI has finally agreed to clean up Python's copyright status. I expect that this won't have any real effect before Python 1.6 is released, but I am required to start preparing for the transition now. We will use a new license (a clone of the JPython license) and we will require that all contributors explicitly allow us the use of their contribution: either a few email paragraphs in an email message, or a longer form with a wet signature, depending on the size of the contribution. I believe the text of the license and forms we use is quite uncontroversial; these very same words have been used for JPython for quite a while. The words are all on the web: http://www.python.org/1.5/pylicense.html [proposed license] http://www.python.org/1.5/bugrelease.html [email release] http://www.python.org/1.5/wetsign.html [wet signature release] If you are reading python-dev but you never contributed any code to Python, you can stop reading now. If you *did* contribute code to Python, however, I'd love it if you saved me some work and filled out the wet signature form and mailed it to me at the given address. If you need help jogging your memory what your contributions were, send me email; I can try grepping the CVS files for your name. If you believe that special circumstances exist that make it impossible or difficult for you to sign the form, please send me email, and we'll discuss the matter. If you contributed something and I don't hear from you, you will eventually hear from me again -- but I hope I can save myself the hassle of writing each of you through this mass mailing. Thanks in advance! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)