[Biopython-dev] Adopting BSD 3-Clause license for Biopython?

[Tiago Antão]

+1 to getting rid of an unstandard license. If BSD 3-clause it is the
closest, then I would change. This irrespective of license preferences: A
potentially unfruitful discussion would be around "the best Free/Open
license".

This is just getting below the umbrella of a standard, OSI-approved license.

A great idea.


On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:13 AM, Peter Cock <p.j.a.cock at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Something Brad and I chatted about during the BOSC 2013 CodeFest
> was should we switch the Biopython licence to something which is
> formally approved as "Open Source" by The Open Source Initiative
> (OSI): http://opensource.org/licenses
>
> The current Biopython License is very short and liberal, and I have
> long described it as an MIT/BSD type licence. However the actual
> wording matches neither of these exactly (as far as I could tell):
>
> http://biopython.org/DIST/LICENSE
> https://github.com/biopython/biopython/blob/master/LICENSE
>
> In theory we could ask the OSI to approve our current license, but as
> they explain "yet another license" is not a good thing to encourage:
> http://opensource.org/proliferation
>
> Brad and I thought it would be reasonable to adopt a standard
> MIT/BSD licence instead.
>
> Note that the following lack a "no endorsement" clause which we
> have currently:
>
> http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
> http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
>
> Therefore this looks like the closest match:
>
> http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause
>
> i.e. The BSD 3-Clause ("BSD New" or "BSD Simplified") license.
> This is also used by the NumPy project and many other Python
> libraries.
>
> Assuming people agree this is a good idea, we can start doing
> this on a file-by-file basis (checking for approval from the named
> copyright holders) and to be rigorous check with every named
> contributor in the CONTRIB or NEWS files.
>
> Peter
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>



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