license question

[Terry Hancock]

Arthur wrote:
> Would the practice of silently overwriting a  file that is part of the
> standard Python distribution in any way constitute a violation of the
> Python license.

No. It definitely is not.  And trying to go after another developer because 
you don't like the way their package installs is itself, "at the minimum, 
ill-mannered".  ;-)

If you don't like it, don't use it. You already recommended a change to the 
developer, that's about all you can do. Or you can:

1 Recommend that users not use the 3rd party package.

2 Recommend that they apply a patch to it (which you provide in your 
distribution).

3 Fork the 3rd party package and maintain it yourself with the change.

4 Figure out how to live with the way the package works now, and write a 
work-around into your code.

I'd probably opt for #2 or possibly #4, based on the small amount of 
information you've posted about the problem.

Cheers,
Terry

-- 
Anansi Spaceworks
http://www.anansispaceworks.com