Questions for Guido van Rossum (Was: ...Tim Peters)

[Grant Griffin]

Courageous wrote:
> 
> 
> > > CNRI's agreement as the copyright holder is the only thing that
> > > gives anyone else the right to distribute, use, or modify the code.
> >
> > Which is why BeOpen...
> 
>                         All Rights Reserved
> 
> Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and its
> documentation for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted,
> provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that
> both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in
> supporting documentation, and that the names of Stichting Mathematisch
> Centrum or CWI or Corporation for National Research Initiatives or
> CNRI not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to
> distribution of the software without specific, written prior
> permission.
> 
> -------------
> 
> Can this license be revoked or superseded? While I am not an
> attorney, somehow I am doubting it. Anyone who holds an instance
> of this license is a valid license holder of it. I.M.O.

IANAL (APOI*), but notice that the license term is not specified.  One
is tempted to infer "perpetual" from the text above (that is,
"_Perpetual_ permision..."), but that is not stated explicitly (as it is
in many licenses--for example, dspGuru's own.)

But take heart: many a thorny problem has been solved by using the "Lone
Ranger" technique, wherein one asks oneself "What would the Lone Ranger
do in a case like this?"  Therefore, if I speculate on what my _lawyer_
might say about this, my guess is that he probably would say it can be
read either way.

(which-kindda-makes-you-wonder-why-he-makes-the-big-bucks-<wink>)
   -ly y'rs,

=g2
*and proud of it. ;-)
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation	      http://www.iowegian.com