[Zope-dev] ZPL and GPL

[A.J. Rossini]

>>>>> "MRB" == Michael R Bernstein <Michael> writes:

    MRB> On 26 Jun 2001 10:30:06 -0400, Barry A. Warsaw wrote:
    >> >>>>> "JA" == Jerome Alet <alet@unice.fr> writes:
    >> 
    JA> For Zope it's not sure, but for Python, as well as for all
    JA> what people usually call "open source" languages, the license
    JA> of choice should be the GPL, or at least the LGPL, in order
    JA> for the language in question to not become bastardized by some
    JA> powerful entity.
    >> I think I'm accurately channeling Guido when I say that Python
    >> will never be GPL'd.  AFAIK, there is no GPL code even in the
    >> standard Python distribution.  Both of those states of affair
    >> are by conscious decision: regardless of what you think of the
    >> GPL (and I personally happen to believe it can be a good
    >> license for /some/ software, but not all) GPL'ing Python would
    >> be a very bad thing.  Guido has always intended for people to
    >> do whatever they want with Python, including using it in
    >> everything from closed source, proprietary, big-$$$ software to
    >> completely free software.

    MRB> I guess I don't understand how licensing Python under the GPL
    MRB> would prevent people from writing proprietary software in
    MRB> Python.

Here's a case in agreement with the above:

    There's a statistical language, "R", whose implementation is
GPL'd.  Recently, a research organization in Australia (who shall
remain nameless) starting selling a binary package for it to do
microarray analysis.  So, value-added software, and the question was
whether it violated the GPL.  Current thinking (as well as that of the
R-core team) was to state that if they wanted to profit, fine, as long
as they didn't build using GPLd header files (and the core team
promptly LGPL'd the headers).

best,
-tony

-- 
A.J. Rossini				Rsrch. Asst. Prof. of Biostatistics
U. of Washington Biostatistics		rossini@u.washington.edu	
FHCRC/SCHARP/HIV Vaccine Trials Net	rossini@scharp.org
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