[Python-Dev] New commands to display license, credits, copyright info

[Guido van Rossum]

The copyright in 2.0 will be 5 or 6 lines (three copyright statements,
with an "All Rights Reserved" for each -- according to CNRI's wishes).

This will cause a lot of scrolling at the start of a session.

Does anyone care?

Bob Weiner (my boss at BeOpen) suggested that we could add commands
to display such information instead.  Here's a typical suggestion with
his idea implemented:

    Python 2.0b1 (#134, Sep  3 2000, 10:04:03) 
    [GCC egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux (egcs-1.1.2 release)] on linux2
    Type "copyright", "license" or "credits" for this information.
    >>> copyright
    Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com; All Rights Reserved.
    Copyright (c) 1995-2000 Corporation for National Research Initiatives;
    All Rights Reserved.
    Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam;
    All Rights Reserved.

    >>> credits
    A BeOpen PythonLabs-led production.

    >>> license
    HISTORY OF THE SOFTWARE
    =======================

    Python was created in the early 1990s by Guido van Rossum at Stichting
    Mathematisch Centrum (CWI) in the Netherlands as a successor of a
    language called ABC.  Guido is Python's principal author, although it
        .
        .(etc)
        .
    Hit Return for more, or q (and Return) to quit: q

    >>>

How would people like this?  (The blank line before the prompt is
unavoidable due to the mechanics of how objects are printed.)

Any suggestions for what should go in the "credits" command?

(I considered taking the detailed (messy!) GCC version info out as
well, but decided against it.  There's a bit of a tradition in bug
reports to quote the interpreter header and showing the bug in a
sample session; the compiler version is often relevant.  Expecting
that bug reporters will include this information manually won't work.
Instead, I broke it up in two lines.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)