On Tue, Dec 04, 2018 at 11:43:05PM +0000, Alan Gauld via Tutor wrote: > On 04/12/2018 19:31, Avi Gross wrote: > > > But some packages are simply python code that you can > > simply insert into your own python files. > > If they are fully public domain that's probably true.
Almost nothing younger than 70 years is in the public domain. Nearly all countries share certain copyright laws, including automatic granting of copyright for the life of the author + many years (exactly how many depends on the country) whether you want it or not. According the lawyers behind the Creative Commons, many jurisdictions make it difficult if not impossible to voluntarily give up copyright and put a work in the public domain: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ One of the few exceptions is that many (but not all) works by the US government are required to be placed in the public domain by law. Having said that, all is not *quite* lost (yet). There are still ways to get equivalent freedom as if the work was in the public domain, and another Mickey Mouse Copyright Extension Act is unlikely to occur any time soon. > If they are copyright (even if open/free) you would be > potentially liable for prosecution since you are copying > someone else's work. That's a rather negative way of looking at it. Copyright infringement is typically handled through the civil courts: the legal authorities don't press charges for copying (except, perhaps, in the case of large-scale piracy of manufactured goods like fake designer handbags, movie DVDs, etc). Rather, the copyright owner has to sue you. If the copyright owner is explicitly giving you the right to copy and modify the software, which is the case for FOSS (Free Open Source Software), then you have nothing to fear so long as you have a valid licence. If you have a valid licence to use and copy the software, and you obey the licence terms, then you are in no danger of being prosecuted for copyright infringement because you are licenced to do so. > Even if it is open source then at the very least > you should include a comment to the effect that > the code is based on, say, M Palin's file parrot.py > or whatever. Giving credit might be good from an ethical point of view, but it may not be either necessary or sufficient (depending on the licence). Some examples: The MIT and BSD licences do not explicitly require you to credit the author, but they do require you to include a copy of the original author's copyright and licence in your work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License If you choose to give credit as a courtesy, that's fine, but you must be careful as to do so in such a way that you avoid giving the impression that the author endorses or is responsible for your work. Good: "MyApp, by me, with a big thank you to J. Cleese for his spam library." Bad: "MyApp with spam by J. Cleese!" On the other hand, the GPL requires more than just credit, it requires that (with some exceptions, including fair use) if you duplicate their code, that your code in turn must be released under the GPL as well. Merely giving credit is in no way sufficient. And on the gripping hand, you have ultra-permissive public-domain like licences such as the creative commons CC0 or the Toybox licence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-domain-equivalent_license neither of which require credit be given. Regardless of the licence, you must obey the conditions (whether they are minimal, as in the MIT licence, or onerous and difficult as in most proprietary licences) in order to be legally permitted to copy the work. But if you have a licence to copy, then of course you may copy according to the terms of the licence. In a practical sense, copying trivial amounts of code from software licenced under the MIT licence, or similar, would be highly unlikely to get you sued. For starters, the author would have to know you copied it, and care, and track you down in real life, and sue you. And if the code snippet was small enough, you could defend on the basis of fair use. (Although more and more jurisdictions are taking a hard-line, minimalist approach to fair use, allowing it effectively only for the purposes of satire. Or even not acknowledging a fair use right at all.) Another factor may be that, regardless of the *actual* legal risk, some employers may not allow copying or use of (some or all) FOSS software even if licenced, because they may fear the unknown, or they believe anti-GPL propoganda ("its a virus that means you will have to give up your intellectual property"), ethical reasons (copying without attribution may be plagiarism), or possibly even for legitimate legal reasons ("the GPL is not compatible with our licence"). Bottom line: yes, you can legally copy FOSS software, under certain conditions, and need not fear being prosecuted. (Actually, you could even copy closed-source proprietary software, if you have a licence allowing you to do so.) -- Steve _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
