[Python-Dev] Mesenne Twister copyright notice

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Martin v. L=F6wis wrote:
> M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
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>> Have a look at the /usr/local/lib/python2.2/ dir. The LICENSE.txt
>> file has the Python copyright notice.
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> Ah, I see. It is renamed to LICENSE.txt when installed.
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>> profile.doc has the license for the profiler.
> =20
> Right. It appears that ActivePython is breaking InfoSeeks copyright, by=
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> not including this file in their distribution...

The license is also copied in the documentation for that
module, so I believe everything is OK.

>> If that's what the licenses want, there's no way to drive around
>> this I guess.=20
>=20
> There are certainly various options:
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> a) we could refuse to incorporate the code in question, or postpone tha=
t=20
> until an alternative implementation comes along that does not have such=
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> requirements, or

-1

Adding a few license text files to the module directory or
a separate section of the Python documentation shouldn't keep
us from including the code.

> b) we could try to contact the authors of the code in question, to find=
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> out whether they would accept other means of acknowledgement (e.g.=20
> mentioning their names in the ACKS file, and putting some text into the=
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> copied source - as Raymond already did)

-0

While this would certainly be a much better solution, I don't
think it is required.

Instead, we should come up with a way which satisfies the licenses.
Since most licenses require a copy of the text to be included in
the documentation, I think the easiest and most reliable way of
achieving this is to add a new licenses section to the documentation
and Python's LICENSE file itself (Latex allows including text from
other files in the docs, so adding new licenses to the LICENSE file
would suffice if LICENSE is included verbatim in the Latex docs).

> It is certainly the case that we haven't been very careful with such=20
> things in the past (in particular in binary distributions), but that is=
=20
> IMO no excuse to be more careful now.

Agreed.

Since you have already scanned much of the code, perhaps you
could summarize your license findings in a new sandbox file
until we have come up with a solution that satisfies everyone ?!

--=20
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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