Python 2.4 killing commercial Windows Python development ?

[Michael Kearns]

I've been using python to write a simple 'launcher' for one of our Java 
applications for quite a while now. I recently updated it to use python 
2.4, and all seemed well.

Today, one of my colleagues noted that on her machine the launcher would 
complain it was missing a DLL - msvcr71.dll

However, there's a very grey area concerning the redistribution of said DLL.

If you've been keeping up with the dev list, and some other web 
discussions, you'll see that this has cropped up several times, but with 
no conclusion in a legal fashion other than 'investigate it on your own 
legal terms'.

I'm now going to have step back to using 2.3 until this issue is solved, 
but judging by the way the dev list discussion just faded, I get the 
impression that it may be a long wait.

I can't see how any company (or individual) can distribute an 
application written in python, and then 'frozen' (I used py2exe) in any 
way if they rely on the python24.dll that ships as standard. This is 
surely a step backwards in usability.

I have no idea concerning the issues of rebuilding a different version 
of python24.dll to be linked against the common msvcr.dll or whatever, 
or changing the 'freeze' applications to do some magic, but I can't 
believe it should be down to the end user to jump through legal or 
compilation hoops when they're trying to use the language.

Apologies if this seems more aggressive than I intended it to be - I'm 
just frustrated at having to stop following my language of choice for 
the foreseeable future so far as my work is concerned.

Michael.