[Python-Dev] Licensing

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Terry Reedy wrote:
> Comment on trust. Trust works both ways. So does distrust.
> 
> Asking contributors to give written licenses in addition to the license
> implicit in the act of contribution is an act of distrust. It says
> something like "We worry that you might change you mind and sue, and a
> court might not immediately toss the suit." So it should not surprise if
> the occasional person reacts with overt hurt and distrust.

The written contributor agreements are needed to enable the PSF
to defend the IP in the Python software. They are just a legal tool,
nothing more.

Note that the PSF doesn't relicense the contributed code under
the whole license stack. The contributed code is (currently) being
relicensed under the PYTHON SOFTWARE FOUNDATION LICENSE VERSION 2
(the top part of the stack), which is a very straight forward
BSD-style license.

The other licenses in the stack only apply to the code owned
by the resp. parties CWI, CNRI, BeOpen and the cast of thousands
(which fortunately didn't get to send in their lawyers and still
had a very good time).

Apart from that, the Python distribution also comes with 3rd
party code under various other BSD-style licenses.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
eGenix.com

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