License for code extracted from a Python library?
Hi - I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but I don't know of a more appropriate place. Sometime around 2007 I first extracted a function that was in Python's Cmd class and used that. Since then, I have modified and generalized it a bit more and turned it into a Python egg called columnize<http://pypi.python.org/pypi/columnize>. I also ported it to Ruby and made Ruby package or gem. A couple of people/companies have asked about redistributing this and have asked for a more MIT-like and less GPL-like license. I guess they will bundle this with their proprietary code. For the Python package, I used PSL Version 2, but is this legitimate? code.google.com doesn't seem to recognize in their list of licenses so that suggests what I did might not be the right thing. (So instead, code.google.com I selected the MIT License.) Can a MIT License be used for code extracted from Python's standard library? Other comments or suggestions? Thanks.
Rocky Bernstein wrote:
Can a MIT License be used for code extracted from Python's standard library? Other comments or suggestions?
The extracted code itself would stay under the PSF license since you don't have the rights to change the license on that. However, as the PSL itself is a very permissive license, you can bundle it with code under whatever other license you or users of your package choose to use (even proprietary ones). That said, while I know a fair bit about software licensing I'm not a lawyer, and even if I was one, I still wouldn't be *your* lawyer, so take what I have to say with a fairly large grain of salt! :) Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------
Rocky Bernstein wrote:
Can a MIT License be used for code extracted from Python's standard library? Other comments or suggestions?
The extracted code itself would stay under the PSF license since you don't have the rights to change the license on that. However, as the PSL itself is a very permissive license, you can bundle it with code under whatever other license you or users of your package choose to use (even proprietary ones). That said, while I know a fair bit about software licensing I'm not a lawyer, and even if I was one, I still wouldn't be *your* lawyer, so take what I have to say with a fairly large grain of salt! :) Cheers, Nick. -- Nick Coghlan | ncoghlan@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia ---------------------------------------------------------------
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Nick Coghlan -
Rocky Bernstein