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

[Christian Brueffer]

On 2013-07-24 11:31, Peter Cock wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 10:23 AM, Tiago Antão <tiagoantao at gmail.com> wrote:
>> +1 to getting rid of an unstandard license. If BSD 3-clause it is the
>> closest, then I would change.
>
> Having a few more eyes confirm this would be good. Anything very
> close makes the switch easier to justify.
>
>> This irrespective of license preferences: A potentially unfruitful
>> discussion would be around "the best Free/Open license".
>
> I really don't want to go down that route - the Python OSS community
> by and large use liberal licenses in the MIT/BSD family. The fact that
> NumPy uses the BSD 3-clause licence is a good standard to follow.
>
> Brad said he prefers the MIT licence (and it is shorter).
>
>> This is just getting below the umbrella of a standard, OSI-approved license.
>>
>> A great idea.
>
> That's the idea - that and the fact that any non-standard license
> (even a nice open one) is one more barrier to adoption - especially
> in companies or institutes with lawyers that care about details.
> This was an issue which came up during the BOSC 2013
> conference. Now since our current licence is short and simple,
> this isn't such an issue - but it is a small barrier all the same.
>
> This also makes like simpler for things like the PyPI license
> tagging and so on.
>

Hi all,

Peter initiated this discussion about changing the Biopython license to 
one of the standard ones (3-clause BSD or MIT) some time ago, but it 
never went anywhere :-)

Now with 1.66 out, I think we should revisit this question.  The few 
people who responded last time (just Tiago and I, if I see correctly) 
were in favor of a change.

Chris