[6th Draft] Open Letter to CNRI: Request for clarification

[Tim Peters]

It would be highly imprudent of me to either encourage or discourage writing
letters to CNRI -- although I really, *really* can't refrain from saying how
much I enjoyed Peter Schneider-Kamp's first draft.  Imprudent or not, I
laughed my ass off (which you would agree is a major accomplishent, had you
ever seen my ass <wink>).  Thank you, P S-K!

Speaking purely as a private individual, if you were me, you would most want
to ask specific questions about your specific situation in order to get
specific guidance.  General questions generally lead to general answers that
are still in need of major guesswork to address your real concerns.  For
example,

    I'm a developer on GNU XXX, which has incorporated Python
    for 3 years.  Up until now, we've been releasing the
    combined XXX+Python package under the GPL.  Will the CNRI
    Python 1.6 license still allow us to do that?

Or

    I'm the CTO of YYY.  For the last three years, we've
    embedded modified versions of Python in our products to
    supply users a nice scripting capability.  Our products
    are proprietary:  we do not and will not release the source
    code, and we consider the changes we made to Python's
    internals to be trade secrets.  Following the dictates of

        http://www.python.org/doc/Copyright.html

    we have reproduced the Python copyright and permission
    notices in our documentation.  Will the CNRI Python 1.6
    license allow us to do the same, with only the substitution
    of the 1.6 copyright and license text?  If not, exactly what
    will be required of us?

Or whatever your situation is.  The closer you can get to describing your
situation clearly enough, and making your questions pointed enough that they
*should* be answerable by "yes" or "no", the more confidence you should have
that you either do or do not undertand the response (or lack thereof) you
get back.

Philosophy is great, but in the end CNRI really doesn't have to explain
anything about "why", and you still need to find out whether *you* can use
Python 1.6 in the ways you want to use it.

The stories wrt OSI certification and GPL compatibility will be simple "yes
it is" or "no it isn't".  The stories wrt proprietary usage will most likely
be fuzzier.

speaking-for-me-and-only-me-and-even-then-only-maybe-
   and-for-all-you-or-even-i-know-somebody-else-merely-
   claiming-to-be-me-may-have-written-this-and-the-more-
   i-think-about-it-the-more-likely-that-seems-since-i-
   really-prefer-short-and-preferably-pithy-signoffs-
   not-to-mention-that-i-never-leave-"ly"-on-its-own-
   ly y'rs  - tim