Python license (2.3)

[Robert Kern]

Antoon Pardon wrote:
> Op 2005-04-14, Robert Kern schreef <rkern at ucsd.edu>:
> 
>>Antoon Pardon wrote:
>>
>>>Op 2005-04-13, Robert Kern schreef <rkern at ucsd.edu>:
>>>
>>>I would do that if I were just writing code I thought others could
>>>find usefull. I then would feel no problem "burdening" those users
>>>with the same kind of license I found in the product I took some
>>>code from. But I also think that readers of documentation should
>>>be free to use any code included in any way they see fit.
>>
>>If they have issues with distributing code derived from Python, why are 
>>they reading a Python tutorial?
> 
> 
> Try and look it from a students viewpoint. He is learing languages,
> algorithms and so on. Now he is ready to write his own program.
> Chances are high that he will rely on examples from the
> courses/documentation he read. It is just not practical for someone
> like that to figure out all the possible different licenses under
> which he can use the examples from the various documenation sources.

The PSF License is about as light as they come.

> Now if this documentation refers to code from yet another source
> with its own license, using it becomes an utter nightmare for
> the student, because now he has to figure out which piece of
> the code is original from the author of the documentation and
> which was copied from the other source.

Then write your own code and don't use anyone else's. You can't offer 
extra permissions for code that's not yours.

> Consideration like this, let me come to the conclusion that
> code included with documentation should come with no strings
> attached for the students to reuse.

No such thing, really. Copyright law requires almost as much as the PSF 
license. The MIT license is shorter, possibly more easily 
understandable, but practically amounts to more-or-less the same thing.

In short, don't worry about it. Don't sue people, keep the attributions 
intact, and probably no one will care.

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern at ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
  Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
   -- Richard Harter