[Info-vax] Python and various libraries updated

[Scott Dorsey]

=?UTF-8?Q?Jan-Erik_S=c3=b6derholm?=  <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
>
>Maybe it is simply that the goal for VSI is not to contribute to the
>open soure world as such, just to provide their customers access to
>some open source tools that might be of value (to the customers).

The thing is that many open source licenses -require- that any changes 
or additions to their code be made available in source form.  Not all
of them do, but the gnu license definitely does.

So if VSI were to port, say, gcc to VMS, any changes they made to the gcc
code as part of that port need to be made generally available under the gpl
since gcc is licensed under the gpl.

>I'm perfectly fine with that, *I* will never read any source code
>for Python, or any other open source tool...
>
>I feel somewhat guilty for this discussion since I asked about the
>Python 3 ports... Sorry about that. :-)

Now, Python is licensed under a BSD-style license, which means that if VSI
makes changes to the code to built it under VMS, they do not need to release
those changes in source form, nor do they need to make their port available
to the general public.  So if VSI doesn't want to release source for their
port, they are perfectly within their rights to do that.

But not all open source code is like that.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."