[TIP] does licensing of test tools matter?

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Wed Aug 5 01:15:19 PDT 2009


holger krekel <holger at merlinux.eu> writes:

> i was wondering the other day - is licensing of test libs and tools
> and issue for anyone here?

Freedom matters, regardless what the intended purpose of the work.

> As noted elsewhere i am considering using (L)GPL style licenses
> instead of the current MIT license possibly for future py.test
> releases so i am interested in opinions from testing people in
> particular and trust no flame wars arise :)

The fact that py.test is currently licensed under terms that respect the
freedom of its recipients is a good thing.

I would welcome a stronger protection of the freedoms of software
recipients, so I would approve a move from no-copyleft toward the weak
copyleft of LGPL, or even better the strong copyleft of GPL.

When considering license terms, though, please be aware that it's far
better to choose license terms that have been widely scrutinised and are
well-understood to unambiguously result in freedom for all recipients,
than to cook up a new (or derived) license text with no such long
history of refinement and correction of flaws. So I hope you don't mean
“GPL-style”, but instead mean “GNU GPL”.

-- 
 \     “I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then |
  `\     I thought ‘Why should I? He never reads any of mine.’” —Spike |
_o__)                                                         Milligan |
Ben Finney




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