Hacker News Reader

Comment by VanL | Hacker News Reader

I am the person Zed is talking about. I am not sure what Zed heard/read, but it seems clear that he is taking something out of context. Of course the GPL applies to Python. It goes just as far as copyright does... which is just not as far as some people think and assert that it does.

There is real danger in pushing the bounds of copyright, even if it is for a good purpose. We need less intellectual property right now, not more.

View on HN

Actually, Van, I was being a dick. I went back and read it and I am very sorry for saying that. I've since rewritten it to not be so critical and harsh toward you.

My apologies:

http://sheddingbikes.com/posts/1274557940.html

This is why we all love you, you asshole.

I generally prefer people who consider their words, and hold some back.

EAFP

http://eafp.org/ ?

But you must be referring to the phrase "easier to ask for forgiveness than permission." I'm not sure exception-handling theory applies to human discourse.

I was going to say that the phrase pre-dates exception-handling theory and therefore must be originally about human discourse, but I checked wikiquote and it's attributed to Grace Hopper. Now I've got no idea what it was about!

Van, nothing personal (because you are an awesome nice guy), but it was your statements at the last PyCon that you believe the GPL doesn't apply to Python because of the concept of "linking". Several times you said this, and it's been repeated and now becoming a standard belief. It was reinforced in your lightning talk:

http://python.mirocommunity.org/video/1374/pycon-2010-plenar...

At 8:08 where you plainly get how include files work wrong, and then attempt to equate that to how Python works, but you ran out of time. That combined with your previous statements regarding linking seems to have people thinking Python is not "linking" and therefore doesn't follow the GPL.

This belief is now permeating the Python community and I think it shouldn't. The last thing I want is Python being known as the GPL violation language, which would set a very dangerous trend among dynamic languages potentially giving companies another reason not to use them for fear of being "delinked" by them.

I'm not saying it's your fault, but it's a general belief that's now supported by your statements which I feel are actually entirely wrong.

Now, if you are saying here you didn't say that, then please, write a blog post that I can "link" to clarifying things so that I can get people to stop thinking that using Python you somehow magically get around the GPL.

Of course, your statements didn't make me change the license, that was more I'm bored with Lamson and just want people to use it now and quit bugging me about it.

Hmm, I will have to go back and review what I said to see if I misspoke. The basic issue is that open source licenses are copyright licenses, and so their enforceability is tied to the scope of copyright. The scope of copyright as applied to software is not at all clear, despite what anyone will tell you. And, probably not surprisingly, a lot of the ambiguity around the scope of copyright comes from the use of interfaces, APIs, and methods of linking. Python, like any dynamic language, is fuzzy around the boundaries here.

There are so many square pegs and round holes that anytime someone says something is "clearly" a derivative work, that person is almost certainly incorrect. The concepts of copyright were never meant to apply directly to software, and the law doesn't work the way people frequently intuitively think it does.

The problem is that applying copyright (and patent, but thats another story) restrictions to software has broad implications for what you can do with the software. This isn't just a practical issue; it is a freedom issue in the Free Software sense. I see so many bogus claims each day about IP that I have become very wary of its scope.

For example, a couple years ago Blizzard was able to get an injunction against another company because the other company sold a program that scripted Blizzard's software. No modification, just GUI automation. I was horrified, and disagreed, but they were able to put together a winning argument.

I unabashedly advocate boundaries on copyright. I think authors should say where they consider their code to end, and other code to begin. I think those boundaries should be reasonable within the scope of the law. I think this principle applies even (or especially) when it is free or open source software.

There's no end to the questions raised: http://jacobian.org/writing/gpl-questions/

…and no answers for them: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=702369

You might be interested in the following discussion and reference:

http://www.law.washington.edu/lct/swp/Law/derivative.html

Perhaps you should also post some link to an article where you explain this some more. It's the first time I hear Python is somehow special in regard to GPL.

Stop responding to polemics, jesus.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com