[Python-Dev] Bundling decimal.py with Django

[Andrew Durdin]

Apologies if this is a little off-topic for python-dev, but it seemed
like the best place to ask and get the attention of those needed.

I am championing a patch to improve Django's support for numeric types
by using Decimals with numeric columns and floats with double
precision columns, rather than the current rather unpredictable
behaviour (which depends on the particular python version and database
backend being used).

It has been proposed[1] to include decimal.py from the Python 2.5
distribution with Django, to ensure consistent and compatible
behaviour between Python 2.3 and Python >= 2.4[2].  Jacob Kaplan-Moss
wrote in response to this proposal

"""
In order for this to be accepted, we need to know:

* What is the license for the decimal module, and is said license compatible
with the BSD license that Django uses?

* Are the authors of the decimal module OK with us distributing it with Django?

Our policy for including third party libraries requires an answer to both
those questions.  We won't include anything if it's not legal to do so, and we
won't include anything that the original author doesn't want included.
"""

I'm addressing the second of Jacob's points here;  would it be
acceptable if the decimal module was distributed with Django?

Andrew


[1] http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers/msg/230892a9f9a71472

[2] Python's _threading_local.py module is already included with
Django for the same compatibility reasons.