Guido i/view

[Derek Neighbors]

> For the most part I side with GPL in the Free Software vs. Open Source
> debate. Guido, however, points out one of the problems that's often
> attributed to rms. Apparently the rest of the FSF suffers from this
> problem as well :(.
> 

Two things here.  Often Richards passion is miread and grates on people
not as adamant about Free Software.  Please note his obsessive passion is
also what keeps things balanced so its a trade off.

Second thing the original issue of court procedings having to take place
in state of the power holder was a valid gripe that really would remove
peoples freedom if it were allowed.  The click through stuff is more on
principle than legality.  I do not know FSF position on the 2.1 license
but am working with RMS and Bradley on trying to get a definitive answer.

BTW: I think a lot of the issue stems from copyright has changed hands
nearly 4 timees in a short time span that python has been around.  I
believe the FSF might be questioning whom really owns the copyright.  As I
believe al parties were NOT in agreement at one point.

In NY I spoke with Bob from BeOpen he felt they had copyright and were
going to have it for 2.0, CNRI had pre 2.0 and post 2.0 had been
undecided, yet it woud vary on which party you asked owned what.  Since
copyright holder has license jurisdiction this is an important factor.

Like everyone I wish the dust would just settle and all parties would
reach agreement.

> Anybody know of a Free Software code beautifier? Something that lets me
> see code how I like it however it looks on disk and lets others bring it
> up in whatever heathen format they like? Maybe we could use this to add
> braces to Python during the coding :).

Debating this is a language ware :  There are plenty of beautifiers, but
most take sloppy C code and make it adhere to GNU Coding Standards.
Though custmizing it to your own wouldnt be a stretch.

To me that is the beauty of python whitespace it nullifies agruments on
whcih way to do it.

> I didn't realize there's a java implementation of Python. Now I know why
> Jiva love's Python so much ;-).

IIRC Jython is under a really poor license.  Please be careful.

Derek Neighbors
derek@gnu.org