The Python Software Foundation License (PSFL) is a BSD-style, permissive free software license which is compatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL). Its primary use is for distribution of the Python project software. Unlike the GPL the Python license is not a copyleft license, and allows modifications to the source code, as well as the construction of derivative works, without making the code open-source. The PSFL is listed as approved on both FSF's approved licenses list, and OSI's approved licenses list.
Earlier versions of Python were under the so-called Python License, which is incompatible with the GPL. The reason given for this incompatibility by Free Software Foundation was that "this Python license is governed by the laws of the 'State of Virginia', in the USA", and the GPL does not permit this.
The year that Python's creator Guido van Rossum changed the license to fix this incompatibility, he was awarded the Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software.
Read more about Python Software Foundation License: External Links
Famous quotes containing the words foundation and/or license:
“Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature’s laws are more immutable than any despot’s, yet to man’s daily life they rarely seem rigid, but permit him to relax with license in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the things he may not do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)