Quality control in open source development

[Steve Holden]

Dave wrote:
> With the open source licenses that allow redistribution of modified
> code, how do you keep someone unaffiliated with the Python community
> from creating his or her own version of python, and declaring it to be
> Python 2.6, or maybe Python 2.7 without any approval of anyone at the
> PSF? Maybe their code is terrible, and not even compatible with the
> rest of Python! How can the PSF, for example, maintain the quality and
> coheren of new code contributed to be part of Python, or derivative
> works that claim to be some future version of Python? If licensees can
> redisribute as they like, isn't this a huge problem? Is this dealt
> with be restricting use of the Python trademarks?  Just curious..

The PSF relies on the Python core developers to maintain quality. As far
as redistribution is concerned there are requirements to describe the
changes made to the basic Python distribution in derived works.

As far as calling it "Python" is concerned, the PSF maintains a
trademark on the word "Python" used to describe computer software. An
informal description of PSF policy on uses of the trademark can be found at

  http://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/

regards
 Steve
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