[Python-Dev] Copyright notices in modules

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Raymond Hettinger writes:

 > Does the copyright concept even apply to an abstract base class (I
 > thought APIs were not subject to copyright, just like database
 > layouts and language definitions)?

Yes, it does, although a public API per se is not subject to
copyright, because there's only one way to do it.  Any comments,
internal implementation (eg, names of persistent state variables,
members, and constants, and the very existence of those identifiers),
and tests are subject to copyright because they are expressive.

I believe that a private API also can be subject to copyright, though
I'm not as sure of that.  The point being that there are good APIs and
bad APIs that expose the same functionality, so that API design is
expressive.  However, if you expose the API and license people to use
it, that license makes it impossible to restrict them from using it
thereafter.

Caveat: IANAL, and this is under U.S. law.