[Python-ideas] Re: Make itertools recipes license easier

I think you might be mixing up two different things. First is the text of the Pytjon-2.0 license. I don't want to change that, or the text of any other license. Second is the LICENSE file. That file includes the text of the Python-2.0 license, the text of every other license used in the project, the history licenses, and some other brief information. This is what I am suggesting we edit. At the very least the LICENSE file, as I understand it, should contain the text of every license used (or say it is in a separate file) and a brief note about where it is used if it isn't the "default" license. As I mentioned, the current file does exactly that. So we would need to add the CC0 license text and at least a very brief explanation of why we added it. Thinking about it a bit more, considering there is already a license history, I think this is a significant enough change that it should probably be mentioned somewhere in that history. Of course the other stuff you mentioned should be done, too. Does this sound reasonable? On Tue, Oct 29, 2019, 14:25 Guido van Rossum wrote:

Thanks for thinking this through a bit more.

I would be wary of changing the Python license -- it's got loads of baggage and legally I don't know if we can make that stick. Basically I think we should let leave well enough alone and let sleeping dogs lie. So I am not keen to add a sentence to the license.html file or to the LICENSE file in the repo and distro.

But what I think we *can* do is add that sentence to the introduction of each of the documentation volumes (tutorial, library, reference and maybe 1-2 more). Ideally we would also do something to the Sphinx template to add this (and the CC0 logo) to the bottom of each HTML page next to the copyright notice, as you propose. I'm no Sphinx expert so I don't know how to do that, but I'm sure it's technically feasible and I can't see any legal objection to it.

Maybe you could work on a PR with a patch to the doc files? (Maybe also file a bpo issue first to track it.) Final approval may require a roundtrip to the PSF's lawyer, but that's usually easy enough, and it helps tremendously if we have a PR with proposed text.

PS. If you can't find where the copyright notice is in the Sphinx templates, maybe it's part of the python.org website? That has its own repo, follow the "Found a bug?" link on each page.

--Guido

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 6:53 AM Todd wrote:

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I am not really a lawyer, so I don't know for certain how to effectively do this or how fine-grained it has to be. I can float some possibilities, but someone more knowledgeable would have to assess them.

There is a page on the python website about the license [1]. As far as I can tell this page is duplicated in the "LICENSE" file in the root of the Python sources (or there is something very similar). It may be possible to simply put some text there saying that all code present in the documentation is under the CC0 license (probably with the text of the license somewhere). This would be a good thing to do, in my opinion, no matter what, but whether it is sufficient I don't know. If that is sufficient, I think that would be the ideal solution.

Perhaps text like: "The Python __ver__ software and documentation is available under the [Python-2.0 license]. However, all code found in the documentation has been released into the public domain or, in jurisdictions where that is not allowed, is available under the [Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license]." ([] indicate links to the license text) I think this would probably be best under the "Terms and conditions" section, but before actual text of the license.

If that isn't sufficient, it may be possible to also put that at the bottom of all the documentation pages, where the copyright text already is. I assume the copyright text is some sort of automatically-added footer, so hopefully this would be something that could be done once. Perhaps something like "Code found on this page is under the [CC0 license]". There would need to be care to make sure that this is applied to the code in the documentation, rather than the html and/or javascript code underlying the web page. I don't know if my text does that or not.

If even that isn't sufficient, there may be some way to add the CC0 icon [3] to every piece of code in the documentation automatically, but I don't know enough about how the code is generated to say, and I would hope that wouldn't be necessary.

Another possibility would be to amend the Python license itself. Currently the license is known as the Python-2.0 license [4]. This would probably be the Python-2.1 license. However, not being a lawyer I would not presume to touch the license text.

[1] https://docs.python.org/license.html [2] https://docs.python.org/license.html#terms-and-conditions-for-accessing-or-o... [3] https://licensebuttons.net/p/zero/1.0/88x31.png [4] https://spdx.org/licenses/Python-2.0.html

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 6:19 PM Guido van Rossum wrote:

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OK, let's see if we can do CC0. Todd, do you want to read through the link Steven gave and find out how we should apply this, either to just the itertools examples, or possibly to all examples in the docs?

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 2:01 PM Steven D'Aprano wrote:

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On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 12:36:40PM -0700, Christopher Barker wrote:

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IANAL, but if we could put a clause in the docs that all recipes are in the public domain, that would be great.

The public domain is *exceedingly* problematic. Many juristictions do not have any legal process for putting things into the public domain before the standard copyright expiry, or even prohibit the attempt to surrender such rights.

That's why the Creative Commons folks have their CC0 licence, which seems to be the most appropriate for this case.

https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/U3SMXG... Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) *Pronouns: he/him **(why is my pronoun here?)* http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-singular-pronoun-can-c...

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-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido) *Pronouns: he/him **(why is my pronoun here?)* http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-singular-pronoun-can-c...