[Python-Dev] License status and 1.6 and 2.0 releases

[Guido van Rossum]

Folks,

After a Labor Day weekend ful excitement, I have good news and bad
news.

The good news is that both Python 1.6 and Python 2.0b1 will be
released today (in *some* US timezone :-).  The former from
python.org, the latter from pythonlabs.com.

The bad news is that there's still no agreement from Stallman that the
CNRI open source license is GPL-compatible.  See my previous post
here.  (Re: Conflict with the GPL.)  Given that we still don't know
that dual licensing will be necessary and sufficient to make the 2.0
license GPL-compatible, we decided not to go for dual licensing just
yet -- if it transpires later that it is necessary, we'll add it to
the 2.0 final license.

At this point, our best shot seems to be to arrange a meeting between
CNRI's lawyer and Stallman's lawyer.  Without the lawyers there, we
never seem to be able to get a commitment to an agreement.  CNRI is
willing to do this; Stallman's lawyer (Eben Moglen; he's a law
professor at Columbia U, not NYU as I previously mentioned) is even
harder to get a hold of than Stallman himself, so it may be a while.
Given CNRI's repeatedly expressed commitment to move this forward, I
don't want to hold up any of the releases that were planned for today
any longer.

So look forward to announcements later today, and get out the
(qualified) champagne...!

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