[pypy-dev] Intellectual property

David Ascher DavidA at ActiveState.com
Mon Jan 13 01:33:14 CET 2003


Christian Tismer wrote:

> David Ascher wrote:
>
>> I'd like to suggest that the issue of intellectual property and 
>> license be tackled _very_ early.  Anything else is inexcusable IMO =).
>
>
> David? Whom are you afraid of? Not me, I hope!

I'm afraid of no one -- I'm afraid of lazyness which makes early 
non-decisions hard to reverse.  Some projects would like to change their 
license, for example, but can't because the IP assignment is so complicated.

>> Proposal:
>>  - all of the minipy IP is assigned to the PSF.
>>  - the license is either the PSF license or the Academic Free License 
>> http://www.opensource.org/licenses/academic.php.
>>    (the advangate of the AFL is the patent protection, which I 
>> suspect may be relevant in this particular implementation).
>
>
> Hmm. Or do you believe this project can be so
> *very* successful that we should be afraid
> of larger companies, who might 'see sharp'
> upon us. ;-)

I just think defensive patent strategies should be thought about.  It's 
ok, as long as the PSF has copyright, the PSF could always change the 
license on later releases if it saw fit.

--david



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