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

[Tim Peters]

[Guido]
> 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?

I personally hate it:

C:\Code\python\dist\src\PCbuild>python
Python 2.0b1 (#0, Sep  3 2000, 00:31:47) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
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.
>>>

Besides being plain ugly, under Win9x DOS boxes are limited to a max height
of 50 lines, and that's also the max buffer size.  This mass of useless
verbiage (I'm still a programmer 20 minutes of each day <0.7 wink>) has
already interfered with my ability to test the Windows version of Python
(half the old build's stuff I wanted to compare the new build's behavior
with scrolled off the screen the instant I started the new build!).

> 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.
>     >>> ...

Much better.

+1.