The Python licensing situation.

Karl Fogel kfogel at red-bean.com
Wed Jun 8 14:29:37 UTC 2011


Ben Reser <ben at reser.org> writes:
>On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 12:54 PM, Chuck Swiger <chuck at codefab.com> wrote:
>> Just like the folks on CPAN writing Perl modules, it is very common
>> for someone writing Python code which they are willing to share with
>> others to license such code under the same terms as Python.  For an
>> example:
>>
>> __author__    = 'Chuck Swiger <chuck at pkix.net>'
>> __copyright__ = 'Copyright (c) 2005-2006 Charles Swiger'
>> __version__   = '$Id: histogram.py,v 1.6 2006/05/06 15:47:51 chuck Exp $'
>> __license__   = 'This software is licenced under the same terms as
>> Python.  (See the PSF license at www.python.org/license.html).'
>
>There is a lot of logic to this too.  I'm not sure if Python code has
>ever ended up being included in the Python distribution (I have to
>admit Python is not something I've spent a lot of time looking at). In
>the case of Perl many modules have eventually gained so much use that
>they've been included in the standard Perl distribution.  Using the
>same license makes this easy.

Also a good point.  Though I can't think of examples off the top of my
head, I'm pretty sure this happens with Python in the same way it does
with Perl.

-Karl



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