Public Domain Python

[William Tanksley]

On Wed, 13 Sep 2000 21:41:06 +0100, Grant Griffin wrote:

>But seriously folks, I'm beginning to think that the many legal
>dimensions of open-source software are completely untenable in the
>aggregate.  The solution seems to be to pretty-much ignore all the
>things that drive lawyers crazy (which seems to be pretty much the _de
>facto_ answer up until now; there seems to have been almost zero
>litigation on the subject), or else to create some new body of statute
>law to "clarify" this mess.

>Since the latter seems unlikely, I vote we stick with the former.

Excellent, sir!  Would it help if we ran away further?  ;-)

Sorry.  Couldn't resist.

In a sense, you're right; especially since the predecessor movement to
open source, free software, is based on the notion that the current laws
are dead wrong, and their favorite license (and ours) is merely an attempt
to use the law to negate itself.

Hardly sustainable.

>and-that-works-because-those-licenses-don't-ever-much-change-ly y'rs,

Aye.  I see this change as being REALLY bad, if only for that reason.  I
had to fight to get my boss to accept Python before; right now there's
absolutely zero chance.  Grumble, grumble.  Fortunately, it won't stay in
flux forever; all I would have to do is convince him that the then-current
license would be stable, in spite of the fact that its owner showed
tendancies to change it arbitrarily in the past.

Grumble, grumble.

I guess I'm glad my employers are not actually looking at Python right
now.  If they were they'd probably make us stop using the version we're
using now.

>Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com

-- 
-William "Billy" Tanksley