[Python-mode] merging python-mode.el and python.el

[Barry Warsaw]

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On Jan 18, 2009, at 4:29 PM, Dave Love wrote:

> There is talk in the python-mode.el and on the web site of merging it
> with python.el.  I hope people realize that can only be done in
> accordance with the GPL licence of python.el -- i.e. one way --  
> although
> it doesn't seem useful anyhow.  There's already been an attempt to put
> python.el code into python-mode.el contrary to the licence via a bug
> report, and I'm concerned that it doesn't happen any more (unless
> python-mode.el's licence is changed, obviously).
>
> It's not clear to me what's in python-mode.el that would be useful to
> put in python.el, although I've only skimmed the current version.
> Anyway the main raison d'être for python.el was that we couldn't get
> copyright papers for python-mode.el for inclusion in Emacs (and I  
> won't
> put unassigned code in my version).  Also, python-mode.el changes for
> Emacs weren't accepted, so I wrote an intentionally incompatible  
> mode to
> minimize confusion and ease maintenance.

While technically the python-mode.el file does not have  GPL license  
on it, we've tried many times in the past to assign copyright so that  
it /could/ have such a license on it, and even be owned by the FSF.   
It's long been pulled out of the Python distribution so it needn't  
(and in fact doesn't) have a PSF license on it.  Tim and I have both  
assigned copyright in our changes to the FSF.  I think Ken did too, as  
he was the author of pdb-track among other good code in python- 
mode.el.  I'm not sure about Skip.  Looking at the committer line from  
'bzr log' (which should include the svn history), that should just  
about cover it, though there may be contributions described in  
comments that need to be looked at.

I believe there should be no reason why python-mode.el could not be  
released under the GPL, probably even with a copyright FSF.  If there  
are a few contributors who need to be tracked down to get assignments  
from, that shouldn't be difficult.

- -Barry

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