using the PSF license for one's code

[David Brown]

"Donnal Walter" <donnal at donnal.net> wrote in message
news:918bc22f.0211060732.47b2198d at posting.google.com...
> David Brown:
> > There are basically two categories of open source licences, as far as I
can
> > see - gpl-type licences (you can use our source, but you have to apply
the
> > same licence to the modified code) and bsd-type licences (you can use
our
> > source for anything you want, but you have to acknowledge the
copyright).  I
> > am a great believer in the spirit of a licence rather than the letter of
the
> > licence, and as far as I can see, the Python licence is in the same
spirit
> > as the BSD licence.  I don't know how that would stand up in court,
however,
> > but hopefully it will never have to.
>
> Well, I'm not likely to take anyone to court, and neither is my
> University for that matter.
>
> For entities like PSF that distribute a lot of copies of their
> software, it probably makes sense to write their own specific
> licenses, but for everyone else (like me) it seems to boil down to
> choosing GPL or BSD. Who would have guessed that it could be this
> simple? (And I am not being sarcastic; this thread has helped me
> considerably.) Thanks.
>
> Donnal Walter
> Arkansas Children's Hospital
> University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

That's certainly how I look at it (perhaps with a bit of variation - if I
want to release a Python module, I'd probably say "python licence" rather
than "bsd" licence, simply to be consistant with other python modules).  But
if you are doing something big or important, you might want to get some
legal guys to look at it - my (perhaps unfounded) impression is that
American lawyers are much better at "letter of the law" than "spirit of the
law".