The State of Python

Tim Peters tim_one at email.msn.com
Fri Jul 28 02:41:08 EDT 2000


[Tim]
> The old Python license served it very well for a decade.

[Stian Husemoen]
> It served CNRI very well..

Not really:  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.  Or at least that's
what everyone seems to believe, despite that it's conspicuous by absence:

C:\Python16>python
Python 1.6a2 (#0, Apr  6 2000, 11:45:12) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>>

> as it made it possible for them to grab a hold of everyones
> contribution and make it their own property.

I don't think even an ill-willed reading of the Python license supports that
view.  It's been certified as an Open Source license, and while you may want
to call it a "free software" license instead, same thing with respect to
your rights to get, use and modify all the code.

> The hole driving force of a open source project is that people
> feel they own a part of the code. If that's taken away, people will stop
> working on the project.

That's never been a problem for Python.  Whether it *will* be a problem
under the new CNRI license remains to be seen -- for that matter, the CNRI
license itself remains to be seen <wink>.  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.

life-in-limboland-ly y'rs  - tim






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