[5th Draft] Open Letter to CNRI: Request for clarification

[Tim Peters]

[Stuart Ford]
> I have spent the last 15 months trying to convince my company
> that Python is not only a viable solution for prototyping, but
> also a good language for general development.
>
> Any change in the license that changes our ability to release
> products using Python will set all my hard work back to stage
> one, plus make me look the fool for recomending the language
> in the first place.

[phil]
> Exactly.  I even asked this question in this group and was
> assured that this was not a problem.

Well, "this group" hasn't even seen the new license yet, and even if they
had they didn't write it.  Questions about the license's intent can only be
answered by its author!  A slighly earlier version of the license was
determined to be Open Source compliant by the board of the OSI, so if
version 1.7 of OSI's Open Source Definition

     http://www.opensource.org/osd.html

covers everything you want to do with Python, you can rely on OSI's judgment
about that.

If GPL compatibility is what's important to you, CNRI and Richard Stallman
are still talking about that (at least as of late Monday night, which is the
last I heard about it), so that's still unknown.

If you use Python in proprietary ways, I can only repeat that you'll have to
ask CNRI yourself.  AFAIK, there is no recognized independent body (like the
OSI or the FSF) negotiating with CNRI on behalf of proprietary interests.
While BeOpen PythonLabs supports proprietary applications of Python, we're
not writing the license, and aren't competent to say whether it will work
for *you*.  This simply isn't a question the newsgroup can answer -- and I
don't believe CNRI reads c.l.py, so complaining about it here is only going
to get you sympathy from people who already agree with you (and, ya, maybe
hear from people who don't).

so-i-guess-if-you-can-run-your-business-on-sympathy-and-heat-
    you're-all-set<wink>-ly y'rs  - tim