The Python Papers License Discussion

[tleeuwenburg at gmail.com]

Thank you all who have commented on the licensing issues surrounding
The Python Papers.

For the time being, the board and I have decided to continue using the
Creative Commons Noncommercial, Attribution and Share-Alike license as
the standard license for articles contained in The Python Papers.
However, a number of reasonable concerns have been raised by
individuals on this forum, the most important I consider to be:
  * Incompatibility with the Python license, preventing content in The
Python Papers from being fed back and redistributed, e.g., with the
Python documentation
  * Possible confusion arising from the slogan "free as in freedom"

On that basis, I would like to make two announcements:

  1) Authors submitting to The Python Papers will be permitted to
choose from a number of licenses for redistributing their work. (note
-- their copyright agreement with The Python Papers is *separate* from
the copyright agreement they choose to attach for general use). This
will allow authors to choose greater freedoms to the re-use of their
works if they wish.
  2) The Python Papers will no longer use the slogin "free as in
freedom" but will adopt the Creative Commons slogan "some rights
reserved" in future communications, to the extent possible under human
fallibility :)

Those who have made comments here might wish to submit them for
publication if they would like them to be heard by The Python Papers
general readership. This may be done by emailing
submissions at pythonpapers.org. We may not publish all submitted
comments, and reserve the right to publish them under the license
adopted by The Python Papers generally.