Questions for Tim Peters

[Tim Peters]

[joneshenry at my-deja.com]
> Could you clarify the following statements you made?

Frankly, I doubt it.

>    "CNRI claims that the existing (CWI) Python license isn't
>     a valid license, and while that claim makes little sense
>     to me I'm not a lawyer."
>
> If CNRI the copyright holder doesn't think the license
> is valid, then how are they giving permission to use,
> modify, or distribute the code?

Ah, there's more here than meets the eye.  CWI gave Guido certain broad
rights to Python when Guido left CWI, and Guido signed those rights over to
CNRI.  AFAIK, those documents are not publicly available, and I only know
about them because Guido happened to tell me the other day.  Guido has no
doubts whatsoever about CNRI's legal right to license Python however they
please, and neither does his legal counsel.  The only thing in dispute here
is whether *other* parties can rely on what the CWI license appears to tell
them.  At least three different lawyers so far had at least three different
opinions about that.  Beats me.

>    "Python has never been released with a CNRI license.
>     It's still using the CWI license it had from the very
>     start.  That's what CNRI wants to change, although why
>     they waited to force the issue until Python was gone is
>     unknown to me.  CNRI does hold the copyright, though."

> So CNRI actively agreed to let Python through 1.5.2 and 1.6a2
> retain the CWI license?

I've never worked at CNRI so have no knowledge about what they may or may
not have actively agreed to, beyond their public statements; and I'm not
aware of any public statement they've made relevant to this question.  All
releases of Python (including 1.5.2 and 1.6a2 but also extending back to and
including 1.3) released by CNRI came with no legal text beyond what you can
find by following this URL:

    http://www.python.org/doc/Copyright.html


>    "If enough people turn out to hate it, I personally
>     don't see anything to stop them grabbing Python 1.6a2
>     and building on that (1.6a2 being the last release
>     that came with the old Python license).  For that
>     matter, they may even be able to grab the current
>     CVS tarball.  Whether CNRI would fight that is an,
>     umm, "interesting" question.  I don't know what their
>     goal is here, so it's darned hard to guess."
>
> Which is the interesting question?

Both whether CNRI would fight someone grabbing the source for Python 1.6a2
and building a derivative work from that, and likewise except building from
the current CVS tarball instead.

> Is it about using the current CVS tarball or is about using
> 1.6a2 or 1.5.2?

I didn't mention 1.5.2 in the above, so that was clearly not my meaning.
However, I happen to think that would also be an interesting question
<wink>.  Ditto substituting any other version of Python after 1.2 (1.2 is
the last release of Python made by CWI).

ok-time-for-the-punchline-ly y'rs  - tim