Urgent Question about Python licensing

[Dave LeBlanc]

Dear Tim;

When UCITA first came out, there was a lot of press about it's evils.
Statements where made that a licensor could impose new license clauses
after the fact and unilaterally, that "shrink wrap" licenses became
automagically binding, that a licensor could make a choice of venue
for resolution of legal issues anywhere in the world, and that a
licensor could create software that the licensor could remotely
disable (presumably via the internet) the software you've licensed.

After your statement that that was a "most concentrated pile of
absurdist FUD", I went back and did some further research intent on
proving you incorrect. After all, this was reported by some regular
news organizations (InfoWord, CNET etc.) so how could they be wrong?!
However, after reviewing information at http://www.ucitaonline.com/
and at http://www.2bguide.com, I came to the conclusion that i'd been
mislead. Imagine! being mislead by the press! <g>.  (I should have
known better - i'm a firm believer in the "believe none of what you
hear and only half of what you read" school of thought.)

As it turns out, after the fact license changes are NOT binding,
"shrink wrap" or "click wrap" licenses ARE binding and have been
upheld by the courts, can't make a bogus venue choice, and that a
licensor CAN unilaterally disable software but only after a 2 week
warning in many cases.

http://www.2bguide.com/newsart.html does have a lot of links to the
news articles I recall about the evils of the UCITA, but
http://www.ucitaonline.com has a good FAQ which addresses and rebuts
the claims of it's evilness. FWIW, this FAQ is worth reading,
particularly if you're a small software business entrepeneur.  UCITA
adds some implicit waranties worth checking into.

It also turns out that Virginia's law adopting UCTIA doesn't take
effect until July 2001, so whatever laws Virginia currently has would
apply to Python 1.6+ and not the UCTIA.

So, I was incorrect wrt to my statement about unilateraly chages etc.
My apologies to any who where mislead and alarmed by my post.

Moving along, I find it ironic that the Open Software Foundation calls
the GPL an open source license since it violates the rules given for
such. GPL software has source available, but it's use is constrained
and contaminating (unlike the GLL library license).

Regards,

Dave LeBlanc

P.S Guido is welcome to my first born if I ever have one - but he has
to do his own cooking.

On Sat, 10 Mar 2001 14:59:21 -0500, "Tim Peters" <tim.one at home.com>
wrote:
<snip>
>> 3. Is Python 2.0 covered by that evil CNRI 1.6 license?
>
>2.0 is covered by CNRI's 1.6 license, as well as by BeOpen.com's minor
>variation on that.  I disagree that it's evil, although the way it was
>imposed on the community was exceedingly ham-handed, and it has created
>problems due to its purported incompatibility with the GPL.
>
>> I avoided 1.6 mostly because of the license, and thought that 2.0 had
>> "skipped" 1.6 and used a far more equitable license then the 1.6 one.
>
>I suggest you read the licenses in question (you clearly have not yet).
>
>> 1.6's license permits the copyright holder to suddenly decide that
>> anyone using the covered software must pay a fee (or any other thing they
>> so desire - this is only an example), and by virtue of your even so much
>> as having read the license are implicitly bound to their unilateral
>> declaration - lovely Virginia laws).
>
>No offense intended, Dave, but this is the most concentrated pile of
>absurdist FUD I've seen in a solid year of ill-informed license rants.  Even
>by the FSF's standards, the CNRI 1.6 license is a "free software" license
>(see "The License of Python 1.6b1 and later versions", at:
>
>    http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html
>
>).
>
>the-2.1-license-will-require-giving-your-firstborn-to-guido-ly y'rs  - tim
>
>