[Python-Dev] copyright ownership

[Guido van Rossum]

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 7:44 AM, Antoine Pitrou<solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> Guido van Rossum <guido <at> python.org> writes:
>>
>> Are you a lawyer? Do you know the legal history of Python
>> distributions and the US export laws? It's not so easy -- for one, the
>> PSF (a US foundation) owns the copyright.
>
> Does it? As far as I understand, the contributor agreement is not a copyright
> transfer agreement (« PSF understands and agrees that Contributor retains
> copyright in its Contributions »).

The rights in the individual contributions are retained by the
contributor. However the rights in the distributions as a whole are
most definitely claimed by the PSF. Read the LICENSE file in the
distro. :-)

> Not that it makes the issue easier of course :)

Nothing that involves lawyers is ever easy. That's why well-meaning
suggestions like "but python.org is outside the US" are so aggravating
-- it's so hard to explain why it doesn't work that way.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)