[OT] What is Open Source? (was Re: ANN: Twisted 0.16.0...)

[Gerhard Häring]

* Huaiyu Zhu <huaiyu at gauss.almadan.ibm.com> [2002-04-12 23:15 +0000]:
> BTW, Python is OSS but not FS.

Stop it. Please don't spread that nonsense any further.

Quoting http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html

    """
    The License of Python 1.6a2 and earlier versions.  This is a free
    software license and is compatible with the GNU GPL.  Please note,
    however, that newer versions of Python are under other licenses (see
    below).

    The License of Python 2.0.1, 2.1.1, and newer versions.  This is a
    free software license and is compatible with the GNU GPL.  Please
    note, however, that intermediate versions of Python (1.6b1, through
    2.0 and 2.1) are under a different license (see below).
    [...]

    The License of Python 1.6b1 and later versions, through 2.0 and 2.1.
    This is a free software license but is incompatible with the GNU
    GPL.  The primary incompatibility is that this Python license is
    governed by the laws of the State of Virginia, in the USA, and the
    GPL does not permit this.
    """

Guido van Rossum invested *a lot* of time to clarify this issue with the
FSF. The issue was that they *thought* the Python 1.6 -> 2.0 licenses
were incompatible with the GPL because of the reason mentioned above.
Thank $DEITY this "problem" is solved now.

Gerhard
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