Aaron post to the web.py’s mailing list last night telling that he will put web.py into public domain. A while back ago, he put a poll on what license web.py should be put under. The original license was Affero General Public License, a modified GPL which put another clause requiring any software accessible through a computer network that provide a facility to download the source code, so the derivative work from that software must not remove the same facility. That means everyone who use web.py to develop wep application must also offer their source code alongside since web.py itself has such a facility.

This goes into quite lengthy discussion on the mailing list, mostly on the incompatibality of AGPL with GPLv2 and also the fact that you need to offer sources for any web application you have develop and put it up on the Net. Doesn’t sound like a good idea if you want to propose web.py to your boss or client. While Aaron did offer for anyone who want alternative license for their app to ask him personally, discussion continue on the applicability of AGPL.

To the question on why not putting it under the standard Python license, Aaron replied with:-

I’m opposed to the confusing proliferation of licenses. Python’s had at least three different licenses over its lifetime, all of which have a bunch legalese and complicated clauses, none of which have anything to do with protecting users. Explaining public domain, by contrast, couldn’t be clearer — do whatever you like with it.

which I fully agree that in some cases, license has become someone’s political agenda rather than technical improvement of the code. I hate office politic and I’m not going into another software politic. And on some remark that Public Domain would discourage community involvement:-

I don’r really like the taste of “PD”. Most projects that i remember (back in those days of the amiga) that have been PD have been one-man shows. I would prefer to stress the community aspect and that web.py has a real “home” where peolple come together to contribute and to improve. - jemi #

Aaron replied:-

I hope that web.py is a community where people come together. I can’t really argue against your impressions of things, but in reality if web.py was copyrighted that would mean that anyone who contributed would have to assign their copyrights to me personally. If it’s public domain, they simply need to release them to the community. That seems a lot more community-encouraging to me.

This is a very nice gift from Aaron to the community, and me ;) and from the recent post to the thread, I knew that sqlite is one of the successful software project which was put under Public Domain. I wish the same success to the web.py community.