Python - open forever ?

[Paul Prescod]

Romans Krjukovs wrote:

>...
> - There is a risk that Python can become closed and unsupported in the
> future.
>   (Remember RedHat ?) 

There are two different issues here. One is long-term support for a 
particular software release. You can certainly buy support for even 
RedHat 1.0 (was there such a thing?) from consultants and contractors. 
You just cannot buy it (easily) from RedHat. But even they might not 
turn down your money if you offered them enough.

The second is whether Python will become closed. The Python license 
makes this literally impossible. As soon as you download Python you have 
a perpetual license to it and the code forever. Guido could make a new 
version and try to charge money for it, but the rest of the Python world 
would just ignore him and continue to work on the open version that we 
all know and love. Even if only a tiny fraction of the Python world 
cared about keeping it open (which is unlikely) they could continue to 
make the open version available forever.

> - Who can guarantee that Python will be usable and available  to us if
> it is
>   develeped and maintained by the hackers from all over the world
> without
>   any obligations and guarantees ?

Download it. Then you have it. It will never become less available than 
it is today.

As far as usable on future operating systems and hardware: people used 
to the closed-source model completely invert the relationship between 
licensing and availability of future versions. For a proprietary 
language like Visual Basic to die (or be morphed into an incompatible 
language) it takes a single decision by a single decision maker at a 
single company. I've been at a company where they killed the development 
of a scripting language like Python after it already had a good user 
base. Those users were stranded. We were ordered not to work on it 
because it wasn't profitable enough for the business. ("we don't like to 
make little piles of money. We like to make buckets and buckets of money")

For Python development to stop, _every_ Python developer would have to 
decide to stop doing it. Guido could not stop Tim Peters from working on 
future versions of Python nor vice versa. Python is immune to dips in 
the economy, to corporate mergers and buyouts, to individual or 
corporate bankruptcies, to shifting opinion polls. It survived the years 
from 1992 to 1996 when Guido did almost all of development by himself 
and knew most of the users personally. The mainstream had never heard of 
it. Now its future is secure for at least the next 13 years.

> - How we can minimize such risk ? (Become a member of some club,
>   buy licenses, support etc.)

There is very little risk, but it would be nice of you to join the PSF. 
What risk there is probably stems from the possibility that Python 
accidentally violates a patent. Python is no more or less prone to this 
than a proprietary product but in today's litigious world, it is 
nevertheless a risk. You can help mititgate it by sponsoring the PSF.

> Python is very fast in development, stable and fast code, easy to learn,
> but never the less big and business critical project can't be started
> without
> mentioned risk analyses.
> It would be nice to know what Python society members think about this.

Open source is a means for minimizing risk and reducing your dependence 
on companies that invariably need to make decisions in their own best 
interest rather than yours.

  Paul Prescod