The State of Python

[Guido van Rossum]

richard_chamberlain at my-deja.com writes:

> If someone had made a contribution to the standard library and had
> written a certain licensing agreement as a comment in the file would
> that module still be covered by the BeOPEN or CNRI agreement? - or
> would it's own license still stand?

I'm not a lawyer, and CNRI has on several occasions claimed that in
the view of their lawyers the old Python license is not a license.  So
they may not feel they need to respect other people's licenses (many
of those licenses are almost identical to the old Python license).

But maybe they feel like respecting other people's copyrights, since
they sure appear to believe in their own copyright!  So I expect that
contributions that state a copyright may stand a chance.

For more clarification, I suggest that you write directly to CNRI;
contact info is on their website http://www.cnri.reston.va.us/.
Especially if you own the copyright on some portion of Python and feel
that your rights are in danger of being violated!

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