Public Domain Python

[Will Ware]

Tom (nospam at nospam.com) wrote:
> ...if Python isn't public domain
> then why does the Python community have that good, Linux-like, public
> spirit[?]

Linux isn't public domain either. Most open-source software packages
are not. The copyrights to these packages are retained by whoever wrote
them (or in some cases assigned to someone else, sometimes the Free
Software Foundation). They are licensed under very permissive terms.

It works like this. Under U.S. and international law, a copyright allows
the creator of a work (a book, a poem, a song, or a computer program) to
control how that work is copied and distributed. That person or
institution can then set up any rules he/she/it wants, dictating what can
be done with that work. For convenience, certain sets of rules have been
pre-packaged as standard licenses. A number of licenses are "open-source"
licenses (see www.opensource.org) which means that you, the random guy
in the street, are allowed broad liberties to share, copy, sell, and modify
that work for your own amusement, education, and profit. This is different
from public domain, where nobody holds a copyright on the work.

There are also plenty of standard "closed-source" licenses (e.g. the
Microsoft EULA) which are used with commercial software. Then to make
things even more confusing, there's code which is simultaneously
proprietary and open-source.
-- 
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# Resistance is futile. Capacitance is efficacious.
# Will Ware	email:    wware @ world.std.com