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Public Domain Python

Grant Griffin g2 at seebelow.org
Sun Sep 10 17:31:36 EDT 2000 
Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> 
> Y'know, all this smoke and noise about python license issues makes me think of
> Tim Peters' Public Domain advocacy.  Not that I know anything about legal
> anything, but hey, it sounded good to me.
> 
> How 'bout it, guys? :)
> 
> who-needs-a-silly-old-license-anyway-ly y'rs

>From a practical point of view, I doubt anyone would want to fully
re-implement Python purely for this reason, given that it is already
free/open, and the worst thing that can be said about its license is
that too many lawyers spoiled its legal broth.  (After all, like all
human waste, this too shall pass. <wink>)

IANAL, but as I understand it, given that one wants one's software to be
completely "free" and "open" (in the "wide open", not "copyleft" sense
;-), public domain has the simultaneous strength/weakness that you can't
impose restrictions on its use.  We in the litigious USA always at least
want to impose some sort of "disclaimer of warranty", and producers like
CNRI evidently want to impose the (very reasonable) restriction that you
can't use their name to sell your stuff.  In an ideal world, something
could be made "public domain", yet the legal climate would be such that
people like CNRI wouldn't have to worry about these two small points;
then public domain might be even more popular than the GPL. <wink>

But the points of warranty and endorsement aside, public domain has some
great strengths as an "open-source license":

1) It's very, very simple.
2) It's a "one way" ticket: you can't un-public-domain something, so
users never have to worry about having the plug pulled on something
"free" that they've become dependent on.  <<nicotine>>
3) It's legal meaning is very well established--at least compared to any
_other_ bucket of lawlerly verbal slop.
4) It doesn't limit your freedom in any way (unlike that one license,
which shall rename nameless <<GPL>>.)
5) It doesn't "accrete".  I think most commercial licenses simply get
"replaced" when a software work is transferred to a new owner, but,
ironically, Python's case is illustrative of the accretive nature of
open-source licenses, wherein each "owner" wants to put his own little
spin on it.  (In fairness, one has to give the GPL credit for its
not-accretive nature, but IMHO, that's not worth the price we pay in
terms of limiting our freedom, per 4.)  When one imagines Python decades
from now, having then transferred through several _more_ parties, one
imagines a license text which is actually longer than the Python source
code itself!

I don't know anything about what the case law of public domain says, but
the best solution, IMHO, would be some new internationally-recognized
legal category created by statute law which would automatically enforce
the common open-source provisions of:

1) "Don't sue us inasmuch as we give you free stuff.  'Caveat emptor',
silly!".
2) "Don't use our name as an endorsement without permission."
3) "If you want to fight about it, the fight will be on our legal turf,
not yours."

If these three (new?) conditions on "public domain" were guaranteed by
statute law, PD would suddenly become a *lot* more popular.

public-domain-is-basically-what-most-people-free/open-software
  -authors-were-trying-to-do-in-the-first-place-ly y'rs,

=g2
-- 
_____________________________________________________________________

Grant R. Griffin                                       g2 at dspguru.com
Publisher of dspGuru                           http://www.dspguru.com
Iowegian International Corporation	      http://www.iowegian.com
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