The State of Python

[Guido van Rossum]

Steve Lamb wrote:
> Stupid question: Why is it everyone and their mother is coming out
> with a new open source license for their project instead of sticking
> with the established ones?  I mean, it causes headaches trying to
> keep all of the licenses legally compatible with one another which
> can cause problems for open source down the road when these licenses
> are actually put to the legal test.

Excellent question.  It's not my choice, that's for sure -- I've tried
to convince CNRI [my old employer] to keep the old license, which is
short and sweet and liked by all.  But CNRI insists that the old
license is "not a legally valid license".  And since they have most of
the power in this case, it's their lawyers' opinion that counts.
Python is a "work for hire", owned by CNRI to the extent that it was
produced under CNRI employment, and thus CNRI owns the all-important
copyright.

I'm working with BeOpen.com [my new employer] to ensure that something
like this won't happen again -- I do not wish this upon any open
source developers.

Note that as far as I cal tell, my change of employers is not the
reason for CNRI's desire to change the license; they have been talking
about changing it for years, and since Python 1.5.2 came out their
plan was to change the license on the occasion of the release of
Python 1.6.  If anything, the long hours that BeOpen's Bob Weiner has
put into negotiating the license changes with CNRI probably make the
new license more liberal than I would have been able to negotiate on
my own if I were still a CNRI employee.

(And no, I can't show the new license text yet.  More news on Friday.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)