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

[Tim Peters]

[Tim]
> The GPL is a great choice if your project can live with its
> implications, and you're comfortable assigning copyright to
> the FSF.

[Jürgen A. Erhard]
> Sorry, Tim, I have to chime in here: the GPL has nothing to do with
> assigning copyright to the FSF.  (Assigning copyright to the FSF
> implies GPL, yes, but no vice versa).
>
> Let's try not to make the GPL look worse than it already does, ok?

I didn't mean to imply that, but I guess it can be read that way -- maybe
that's why licenses grow to slobber over the bounds of hard drives <wink>.

If you *don't* assign copyright to the FSF, then the GPL is merely a good--
not a great --choice, in my eyes.  This is purely from an end-user's
perspective:  if I grab a GPL'ed program that entity X holds copyright on,
then X is free to change the license to anything at all upon any future
release.  If X==FSF, I trust the FSF not to pull that trick on me.  If
X!=FSF, it's something else to worry about.  Barry Warsaw and I worked to
get the copyright on python-mode.el assigned to the FSF for (at least from
my POV) this reason; well, in that case, also so that GNU could distribute
it.

IOW, when I open-source something of mine, I want users to know that even I
can't go back on that someday.  Releasing to the public domain is another
way to accomplish that.  The fewer people you have to trust, the easier life
in the paranoid line gets <wink>.