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

[Peter Cock]

On Thu, Nov 5, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Christian Brueffer
<christian at brueffer.de> wrote:
>
> 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 :-)

Specifically the BSD 3-Clause ("BSD New" or "BSD Simplified") license,
as the closest to our current license. This is also used by the NumPy
project and many other Python libraries:

http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause

> 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.

Biopython co-founder Andrew Dalke was also positive, and gave
some interesting history about the original license choice:

http://lists.open-bio.org/pipermail/biopython-dev/2013-August/019941.html

Assuming the core developers are in all agreement, we could ask
the OSI for a legal opinion about if we can make this change without
explicit approval of all the contributors. IANAL but this sounds possible.

Otherwise, I think we need to start a module by module, or at least
Python file-by-file audit moving each file to a dual license ("Biopython
License Agreement" and/or the "BSD 3-Clause").

Peter