using the PSF license for one's code

[Martin v. Loewis]

donnal at donnal.net (Donnal Walter) writes:

> If one wishes use an OSI-approved license for one's own code, there
> are many to choose from, two of which are GPL and the PSF license. If
> one chooses GPL, there are explicit instructions at the Gnu Web site
> on how to use the license. On the other hand, I have not seen any such
> instructions for using the PSF license. Can one simply refer to the
> PSF license without making changes? 

No: that is "between the Python Software Foundation (PSF), and the
Individual or Organization (Licensee) accessing and otherwise using
Python 2.2 software". Unless you are the PSF, and unless you ship
Python 2.2, you cannot meaningfully establish such a contract.

> Or is it advisable to make a revised copy, changing the name of the
> name of the owner/copyright holder from PSF to oneself, for example?
> What else is required?

If you systematically update all legal entities in this document, you
certainly arrive at what I would consider a meaningful license, and
you could use it right away. I don't think anybody but you and your
licensee could "require" anything about your license: If you want to
put the text "you can use this software only on Sundays" into the
license, nobody could stop you from doing so.

Of course, with any changes to the license text, the license probably
loses their OSI-approvedness (ask OSI for details).

In short, we (the PSF) don't care about other uses of this text,
beyond it being a license for Python.

Regards,
Martin