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Weblog:   IronPython 1.0 Beta 1 released
Subject:   Licensing: The elephant in the room
Date:   2006-01-03 04:38:57
From:   simon_hibbs
Response to: Licensing: The elephant in the room

IANAL, but I can't see anything in the license that looks like it would preclude distributing GPL software that uses Iron Python. You even have the right to re-distribute Iron Python itself, but only under it's own license. That doesn't necesserily stop your software from having a GPL license, or any other form of license though.


Simon Hibbs
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  • Licensing: The elephant in the room
    2006-01-04 15:46:13  webmaven [Reply | View]

    No, nothing that *directly* prohibits it, but the conversations I've had with folks at Microsoft have made it fairly clear that as far as their concerned, importing constitutes making a derivative work.

    This has lead me to the conclusion that a GPL program that imports (ie. depends on) something from the .Net environment that is under a more restrictive license (and there is plenty of the .NET code that is) would not be legal to distribute.

    So, while it's true that a GPL-licensed program written in generic python would be perfectly legal to distribute and run on IronPython, anything that was written to take advantage of .Net's features (which would only be accomplished by importing other MS code) would almost certainly *not* be legal to distribute under the GPL.

    So, no GPL software written specifically for IronPython.
    • Licensing: The elephant in the room
      2006-01-11 05:13:11  Chemacortes [Reply | View]

      If .Net don't let you to distribute your software under GPL, then use mono. You can use IronPython to make freesoftware (GPL/LGPL/X11) perfectly.
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