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

[Peter Cock]

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.

Peter