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Showing content from https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2000-December/011025.html below:

[Python-Dev] Python 2.0 license and GPL

(offtopic) RE: [Python-Dev] Python 2.0 license and GPLM.-A. Lemburg mal@lemburg.com
Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:02:05 +0100
Tim Peters wrote:
> 
> [MAL]
> > About the GPL issue: as I understood Guido's post, RMS still regards
> > the choice of law clause as being incompatible to the GPL
> 
> Yes.  Actually, I don't know what RMS really thinks -- his public opinions
> on legal issues appear to be echoes of what Eben Moglen tells him.  Like his
> views or not, Moglen is a tenured law professor

But it's his piece of work, isn't it ? He's the one who can change it.
 
> > (heck, doesn't this guy ever think about international trade terms,
> > the United Nations Convention on International Sale of Goods
> > or local law in one of the 200+ countries where you could deploy
> > GPLed software...
> 
> Yes.

Strange, then how come he sees the choice of law clause as a problem:
without explicitely ruling out the applicability of the UN CISC,
this clause is waived by it anyway... at least according to a 
specialist on software law here in Germany.

> > is the GPL only meant for US programmers ?).
> 
> No.  Indeed, that's why the GPL is grounded in copyright law, because
> copyright law is the most uniform (across countries) body of law we've got.
> Most commentary I've seen suggests that the GPL has its *weakest* legal legs
> in the US!

Huh ? Just an example: in Germany customer rights assure a 6 month
warranty on everything you buy or obtain in some other way. Liability
is another issue: there are some very unpleasant laws which render
most of the "no liability" paragraphs in licenses useless in Germany.

Even better: since the license itself is written in English a
German party could simply consider the license non-binding, since
he or she hasn't agreed to accept contract in foreign languages.
France has similar interpretations.

> > I am currently rewriting my open source licenses as well and among
> > other things I chose to integrate a choice of law clause as well.
> > Seeing RMS' view of things, I guess that my license will be regarded
> > as incompatible to the GPL
> 
> Yes.
> 
> > which is sad even though I'm in good company... e.g. the Apache
> > license, the Zope license, etc. Dual licensing is not possible as
> > it would reopen the loop-wholes in the GPL I tried to fix in my
> > license. Any idea on how to proceed ?
> 
> You can wait to see how the CNRI license turns out, then copy it if it's
> successful; you can approach the FSF directly; you can stop trying to do it
> yourself and reuse some license that's already been blessed by the FSF; or
> you can give up on GPL compatibility (according to the FSF).  I don't see
> any other choices.

I guess I'll go with the latter.
 
> > Another issue: since Python doesn't link Python scripts, is it
> > still true that if one (pure) Python package is covered by the GPL,
> > then all other packages needed by that application will also fall
> > under GPL ?
> 
> Sorry, couldn't make sense of the question.  Just as well, since you should
> ask about it on a GNU forum anyway <wink>.

Isn't this question (whether the GPL virus applies to byte-code
as well) important to Python programmers as well ?

Oh well, nevermind... it's still nice to hear that CNRI and RMS
have finally made up their minds to render Python GPL-compatible --
whatever this means ;-)

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
______________________________________________________________________
Company:                                        http://www.egenix.com/
Consulting:                                    http://www.lemburg.com/
Python Pages:                           http://www.lemburg.com/python/



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