Software licenses and releasing Python programs for review

[Andreas Kostyrka]

On Sat, Jun 04, 2005 at 11:49:28PM -0700, Robert Kern wrote:
> Well, the FSF at least thinks that internal use within an organization 
> does not constitute distribution.
Well, the problem are contractors. It's very important (for example in
Germany) for a number of legal reasons that contractors are separate
from the organization.
This basically makes it a case of distribution.

And while the GPL FAQ claims that this is not a problem, it seems only
to handle the easy case: Company X gives a "standard" SP to
contractor C, and C returns SP2.

While this is okay, the problems start when X discovers that it wants
to distribute SP2 to contractor C2, because it has to do this under
the GPL. Contractor C2 might by free will refrain from distributing
SP2, but putting that as a requirement on paper would violate the GPL.

Basically having a GPLed internal program limits what a company might
do with it in the future ;)

Andreas