[David Ascher]
Guido, maybe it would make sense to explain the need for a license change. Is my understanding correct that the occasion for the license change is that the copyright is now clearly shifting to CNRI, and as a result CNRI has to forge a license? (BTW, I thought *you* had the copyright transfer from CWI, not CNRI).
Correct on both counts. CWI owns the copyright on old Python versions through Python 1.2. I have personally obtained non-exclusive rights to these from CWI. CNRI, by nature of my employment contract, has the copyright on newer versions. CNRI feels the need to protect its intellectual property rights. It feels that the old Python license, even with CNRI added, does not adequately protect CNRI against certain (unlikely) events -- hence the desire to draft a new license. CNRI understands that open source (and now Open Source -- the OSI board has approved the old Python license!) like Python requires different licensing terms than a typical product developed solely by CNRI. I think that the main problem is that CNRI's understanding of what truly constritutes open source is limited, and that my own understanding of legal issues is limited, so that the negotiations with CNRI's legal department (which is headed by CNRI's director) often turn in their favor. I hereby withdraw the posted license. There still is the need for a new license, but we need to go back to the drawing board for it. The CWI ownership of much of the code probably means that the license as it stands doesn't hold anyway. I also think that the Python consortium has a say in the license discussion -- the consortium agreement actually discusses the ownership of intellectual property produced by/for the consortium at some length. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)