[Catalog-sig] licensing and accessability of code on pypi

[Nathan Yergler]

The author of the package is clearly confused with respect to
licensing.  It appears he's using CC Attribution-Non Commercial which
allows unlimited, non-commercial redistribution.  If you release
something under a CC license, you can't also required permission for
redistribution.  We also specifically discourage the use of CC
licenses for software -- they just weren't designed for that purpose
and there are lots of excellent open source/free software licenses
that were.

For what it's worth.

Nathan


On Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 7:42 AM, Andreas Jung <lists at zopyx.com> wrote:
>
>
> --On 28. August 2008 16:30:27 +0200 Joachim König-Baltes
> <joachim.koenig-baltes at emesgarten.de> wrote:
>
>> Today I got aware of pySSH_Monitor through my RSS reader. Trying to
>> download
>> the code by clicking on the download link on pypi I got redirected to
>> www.pypi.info
>> that requires registration through invitation only (by whoom anyway?).
>>
>> Looking a bit closer at the licensing information on pypi for the
>> package, the licensing is very restrictive,
>> e.g.
>>
>> - "may not be used for any commercial purpose whatsoever ..."
>> - as long as "... there was never any intent to use this package to
>> generate any income of any kind."
>> - "...may not redistribute this package without prior written permission
>> from the author."
>>
>> see below for details.
>
> The package is released under the Creative Commons license.
> And of course it is legitimate to use such a license - even if it
> excludes the use for commercial use.
>
>
>> What's the community's opinion on that?
>
> That's the first time I see the CC in the context of software (I thought the
> CC would be focused on print works, book etc.). Anyway...the exclusion of
> commercial usage is just stupid (possibly it is unintended by the author).
> No idea what the intention of the author is. If one wants some revenues from
> a commercial usage, one can always dual-license a software...prohibitting
> its use for a commercial purpose under all circumstances is just odd.
>
> -aj
>
>
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