Urgent Question about Python licensing

[Mats Wichmann]

On 10 Mar 2001 16:20:57 +0200, Erno Kuusela <erno-news at erno.iki.fi>
wrote:

>In article <98cpfe$5oj$0 at 216.39.170.247>, whisper at oz.net (Dave
>LeBlanc) writes:
>
>| Hi;
>| While reading up on the recent Python conference on O'Reilly's site
>| (http://python.oreilly.com/news/pythonday1_0301.html - actually on the
>| 'day 2' page), I cam across the following:
>| ----------------------------------------------------
>[...]
>| This difficulty means that Python
>| can't be distributed with software licensed under the GPL.
>
>that is false. the issue is not distributiong python with gpl software,
>it is mixing the python interpreter code with gpl'd code. (ie where
>the other code and the python interpreter would combine to produce
>what the gpl refers to as a "derivate work").

That's right.

This all /ought/ to be straightforward: a GPL'd piece of code is
'free' and through being combined with some other code, it may not
lose (any of) that freedom.  Putting GPL'd code into the Python
interpeter would cause it to come under the terms of the Python
license, thus changing the terms under which that piece of GPL'd code
was available, and that's not allowed unless the licenses are
considered "compatible", which has been one of the hopes for Python.

The issue seems to be more complicated than this though, because there
are people still worried about including new Python versions on Linux
distributions because of the CNRI license, and I don't fully get why
this is yet (not sure I want to, either).  Like other folks have said,
the subtleties will make your brain explode (always pick up a new one
at Curry's, though).