Public Domain Python

[Tim Peters]

[William Tanksley]
> The problem never was the licenses, really.  The problem was twofold: my
> boss :-) and the companies behind the license.  My boss raised the usual
> question of "who is responsible for support?"  The answer, of course, is
> "in the final analysis, we are."

The most useless software I own is closed-source stuff I bought from
companies that lost interest in the product.  Sorry, but the idea that
you're taking a risk on Python support is just too silly to entertain.  You
get all the support you can eat for free on c.l.py, and you know damned well
you can *buy* Python support from an increasing number of companies too
(lest this be viewed as a plug, I'll mention only ActiveState <wink>).

So take your MS software as a competing example:  who's responsible for
supporting that?  Not MS.  They drop products whenever they feel like it,
and then you're totally hosed.

> This time it's a little scarier, because what we see is a company which
> has NO ongoing responsibity for Python excercising ongoing authority. That
> IS frightening, even for me.  They have almost no accountability to their
> users now, and will not have any at all in the future --

I don't know why you think they ever did.  People trusted Guido, not CNRI,
and nothing material has changed in that equation.  As Guido has said, they
were almost certainly going to change the license anyway, even if he had
stayed there.  They've been planning to for years (and, no, that hasn't been
a secret).

> yet they're attempting to excercise authority over our use of a tool
> which we accepted under very different terms.

You really ought to read the licenses sometime <0.6 wink>.

>> BeOpen.com promised that all work we do on the Python core will remain
>> Open Source, and we're in the process of signing binding legal documents
>> so you don't have to take their word (or ours!) on that either.

> I *like* BeOpen.  Everything they've done seems to be very much in
> everyone's best interests.  I really hope they get their money's worth!

Me too, although I'm not an entirely disinterested party there <wink>.  I'll
suggest, however, that who you *really* like is Guido!

>> Do they use *any* software, then?  Unless everything you use is
>> pure public domain (in the technical sense), a copyright holder
>> can *always* change the license on the next release.

> Not retroactively.  Under UCITA (the state law which is invoked by the new
> license), though, they can.

Says who?  I've seen the claim repeated often enough, but trying to trace it
to its source only uncovers the raw assertion repeated again and again.
There's no doubt that UCITA looks like a majorly blows-chunks law, but I
don't buy this particular claim.  It's surely suspicious that while it shows
up, e.g., on Slashdot and LinuxToday, it doesn't show up in records of
legislative debates.

Here's the law:

    http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/ucitanc.htm

Note in particular that section 308(2)(B) certainly appears to say that the
term of the CNRI license "is perpetual as to the contractual rights and
contractual use terms", because the CNRI license "expressly grants the right
to incorporate or use the licensed information or informational rights with
information or informational rights from other sources in a combined work
for public distribution or public performance", subject only to
"cancellation for breach of contract".

It is, of course, an exceedingly long and tedious law, and other clauses
sure seem to say that your right to use a piece of *leased* "information"
can be terminated for various not-so-compelling reasons.  IANAL, but I'm
slowly becoming as obnoxious as one <wink>, and I don't see a real basis for
this particular bit of UCITAFUD you're spreading.  Point it out!

> But that's not the source of the worry; most license holders have to in
> the long run answer to their customers.  The trouble here is that this one
> doesn't.

They apparently do have to be accountable to the public interest, though.
At least according to them.

> Yup, and I'm a very rewarded man.  We all take what happiness we can get
> out of life...  :-) Seriously, I work in the network security industry,
> and my boss is originally from the medical embedded systems industry.  I
> think that should speak for itself ;-).

It actually raises a different question:  with those backgrounds, you should
*both* know enough to get a legal opinion rather than guess on your own.
After you do, let us know what they tell you!

relief-is-just-a-lawsuit-away-ly y'rs  - tim