[Tutor] OT python Licences

[Sandip Bhattacharya]

Dave S wrote:
> This is a bit OT but here goes.
> 
> My work wants me to write a fairly large python script to analyze some
> technical ASCII data files. Python and its libraries are GPL.
> 
> That being the case am I right in thinking that my script would also
> have to be GPL and I would have to inform my employer as I hand it over ?
> 
> Secondly it would have to run in Windows, The results could pop up on a
> DOS window. However I was looking at QT until I read the Windows
> license. Are there any widget libraries that would allow me to program
> for windows commercially without any license or fees ?
> 

Avoid QT on Windows in that case. It is prohibitivly expensive for most
small applications.

You have three choices for widgets programming:
1. Tk. No external libraries to be installed. But limited widgets i.e.
not much featureful, but adequate for simple GUIs.
2. Gtk. Simple API. A great RAD GUI builder (Glade). Cons are that you
have to have Pygtk installed on windows for your apps to run (I am not
sure if py2exe will package them for you as a standalone). Another con
is that it lacks a native windows look. On that other hand Gtk2 is quite
featureful.
3. wxpython. A bit complex than Gtk. Again external libraries needed to
be installed. However, it is very featureful and provides an exact
windows app look. There is a wxglade, but i am not sure whether it is as
good as gtkglade.

But again, if your app just needs to open a dos window, you can simply
execute it in a bat file, or execute the "start xxx" command isnt it?

About licence, regardless of the compiler or interpretor licence, you
are normally never bound to use the same licence ... UNLESS you are
*linking* to dev libraries, which happens only when you make a binary.
So if you distribute the code (and in the case of scripts like python
you probably do), you can licence it in any way. But if you distribute a
py2exe generated windows application, then your code might be bound by
the linked libraries. So if you are using PyGtk or wxpython, and
creating windows executables using py2exe, you should look at the
licences of these libraries too. AFAIK, these two widgets are quite
liberal in linking and there is no restrictions in making commercial
apps with them.

- Sandip

-- 
Sandip Bhattacharya  *    Puroga Technologies   *     sandip at puroga.com
Work: http://www.puroga.com  *   Home/Blog: http://www.sandipb.net/blog

PGP/GPG Signature: 51A4 6C57 4BC6 8C82 6A65 AE78 B1A1 2280 A129 0FF3