[SciPy-user] Python(x,y) - New release 1.1.0

[Robert Kern]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 4:55 PM, David Warde-Farley <dwf at cs.toronto.edu> wrote:
> On 16-Apr-08, at 5:24 PM, Ondrej Certik wrote:
>  > On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:07 PM, Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com>
>  > wrote:
>  >> Python(x,y) is restricted to only use for non-profit?
>  >
>  > Seems like that according to:
>  >
>  > http://pythonxy.com/license.php
>  >
>  > Just a couple days ago there used to be an open source license. Well,
>  > that reduces me interest a lot, as I am not really motivated to
>  > contribute to a non-opensource solution.
>
>  Hmm... I read that license, quite puzzling.
>
>  IANAL, but each of the included packages in Python(x,y) have their
>  own licenses, and most of the major ones are licensed under the BSD
>  license or something similar, which permit commercial use. I'm not
>  sure that a license on a software collection can regulate use of its
>  more liberally licensed components. At the very least it would be
>  hard to enforce. So, maybe what's restricted is the use of the Python
>  (x,y) installer by a commercial entity? I really have no idea.
>
>  Also, I think there may be some murky water concerning distributing
>  GPL'd packages under this license (I notice PyQt is distributed under
>  the GPL).  Again, no law degree here, but it seems like it might be a
>  problem.

IANAL. TINLA.

At least in the US, collections of other copyrighted works can have
their own copyright and licensing terms. Each of the individual works
also has an independent copyright and potentially a license. The
application of the Non-Profit OSL to the collection does not imply
that each of the components falls under that license, just the
collection. A clarification on the Python(x,y) page would be in order.

The Python(x,y) license cannot place additional restrictions on the
redistribution of the particular GPLed code. It can place restrictions
on the collected work, but if one were to extract the GPLed code from
the collection, one should be able to only deal with the GPL and not
the license of the collection. Or rather, if the license of the
collection attempts to forbid that, then Python(x,y) cannot legally
include the GPLed components as part of the collection.

For example, the official OpenBSD CDs are copyrighted and have
restricted distribution. However, the CDs include GPLed packages like
gcc.

  http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq3.html

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
 -- Umberto Eco