[Python-Dev] Still no new license -- but draft text available

[Gary Momarison]

"Tim Peters" <tim_one at email.msn.com> writes:

> Stick around!  It's usually a lot more fun than this -- Python *had* lived a
> charmed life until recently, from picky legal points of view.

It charmed me quickly a while back.  Both the generosity of its
licensor and the design (readability, OO, etc.) of the language.

[snip]
> the cardinal rule is "don't innovate!".  That is, pick the existing licenses
> you like best from the list at
> 
>      http://www.opensource.org/licenses/
> 
> and ask an attorney which suits your goals best.
[snip]
> Courts have been known to do surprising things, and unless you view yourself
> as an Intellectual Property Pioneer, I think you're better off picking a
> license that scads of other people rely on too (if nothing else, then if
> you're attacked, they'll feel at risk too, and at least America is an "all
> the justice you can afford" kind of country -- unless you've got deep
> pockets, you'll go broke defending a unique license on your own).
[snip]
> In recent times, the Open Source Initiative has been saying there are
> already plenty of licenses to choose from.  Since CNRI was determined to
> roll their own, we're especially grateful that the board of the OSI was
> willing to examine it.  Visit
> 
>     http://www.opensource.org/
> 
Few of the OSI-certified licenses allow MIT/BSD/CWI-like freedoms. Those
that do would, I'm quite sure, be laughed at by most attorneys, eg, CNRI's 
attorneys.

It's a Bad Thing that people are choosing Bad Licenses simply because
they are popular (eg, BSD or GPL) or because they seem to be legally
sound (eg, GPL).  But because people think that way (for some good
reasons as you indicate), I've been toying with the idea of rolling a
good MIT/BSD/CWI-like license that I would try to get vetted by lawyers
and professors like RMS did with the GPL.  But I'm no RMS, so I expect 
I'll not do it.