[Catalog-sig] PyPI's external packages

[Stefan Krah]

Richard Jones <richard at python.org> wrote:
> On 14 May 2011 18:58, Stefan Krah <stefan-usenet at bytereef.org> wrote:
> > 1) The terms and conditions: As Terry mentioned, the terms and conditions
> >   are not very clear. I understood the intent only after reading VanL's
> >   comments in an old thread. Many package authors come from a culture
> >   that rejects licenses that require interpretation by a lawyer. As a
> >   consequence, they upload as little as possible.
> 
> This is interesting to me. Do you have a reference to that old posting
> of VanL's because I think I might have missed it. As far as I can tell
> there are no explicit terms and conditions on submissions to PyPI. It
> is stated in a couple of places that the code must be "open source"
> but I don't recall any serious discussion of the requirement.

If you create an account, you have to agree to this:

3. "The PSF is free to use or disseminate any content that I upload on an
    unrestricted basis for any purpose. In particular, the PSF and all other
    users of the web site are granted an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free,
    nonexclusive license to reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, perform,
    and publish the content, including in digital form."


Discussion of the usage agreement is in the thread starting here:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2009-December/002456.html

VanL's comments are also in that thread.



The terms are too broad. Because all users of PyPI get the same rights
as the PSF, essentially every work that is uploaded gets an implicit
CreativeCommons/no-deriv/no-attr stamp.

M.-A. Lemburg has argued this in greater detail (see the paragraph under
the link to the Google terms) here:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/catalog-sig/2009-December/002483.html



Stefan Krah