Divisive language in license documentation

I do not feel that the documentation for a Python library is the place to make political statements (in this case permissive vs copyleft). Such language serves only to aggravate those with differing viewpoints, and leave a lesser impression on those who are just weary of it all! :)

I would suggest removing the section entirely, and just beginning the "Requests License" section with the "Requests is released under the terms of the ISC license:" line.


You raise an interesting philosophical point: isn't the choice of a license _itself_ a political statement? Surely anyone who is opposed to permissive licenses (or, to be more generous, would prefer copyleft ones) would be equally irked by the simple presence of the ISC license?

The previous comment is mostly tongue-in-cheek. =) The maintainer of a Python library (or indeed anyone on the internet) has the freedom to make whatever political points they choose in the manner of their choosing. Additionally, the statement being referred to is not in the main section of the documentation, so only those who actively seek out information about the license will read it (trust me, those people are the minority).

Requests is an opinionated library. To see this, you only have to scroll through the (many) closed feature requests which end with Kenneth saying "No, that's not how Requests does it". It seems reasonable that this opinionated nature carry over to its documentation.

Thankyou for your suggestion, though! If you have any further queries or suggestions, please don't hesitate to raise them. =)


It's in the [introduction of the user guide](http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/user/intro/) (the very first page!); that's hardly obscure, or limited to license junkies... :P

My issue is not with the choice of license, or with people having opinions (what a hypocrite I would be!), but with the pontificating tone of the section in question. I, and many other people, do not appreciate others trying to force their opinions on me, even if the opinions expressed are agreeable.

That notwithstanding, the statement regarding commercial GPL use is misleading, at best. Mainly down to the use of the word "product", rather than "software" (eg. plenty of closed-hardware "products" include GPL'd code).

Quite frankly, I can see no reason to bring up the GPL at all in this section, if it's not actually being used..?


Good point about its location. Clearly I'm so familiar with the documentation I just assume everyone does what I do and skip straight to Quickstart.

Regarding the tone, I think we have a legitimate difference of opinion here. My reading of that section is that the tone isn't pontifical but informative. It does not say "Do not use the GPL", it says "Don't use the GPL _without thinking_", which is very different.

That said, I'm happy for @kennethreitz to weigh in here if he feels differently.


Difference of opinion? On MY Internet? :)

> [The GPL] should most certainly not be your go-to license for your next open source project.

...is what I mean by pontificating.

Personally, I don't think the choice of license needs explanatory documentation. Those who care about licensing issues will understand (or vehemently disagree! ;) ), and those who don't care... don't care!
If included, however, I would suggest something more simple, eg:

> Requests is distributed under the terms of the ISC license, so that both proprietary and open-source projects can use it freely:
> [text of ISC license]


@Lukasa that's exactly the intention: :cocktail: 


Well, let's see if I can make everyone happy. I'll submit a PR this evening with revised wording that keeps the original intent clear.


As someone who consistently licensed projects under the GPL and continues to work on GPL'd projects when I first looked at requests and flask and saw the anti-GPL ideologies I was turned off to the point of deciding to use urllib/2 for a while there. I was on vacation a few months later with a terrible internet connection and started reading more into the various licenses and their uses. Clearly I'm not turned off anymore by the anti-GPL language since I recommend and use requests profusely besides trying to help make it better. I do however realize that there are times when the usefulness of a module or library or project in general outweigh my typical copyleft leaning. As such, github3.py is 3-clause BSD licensed and is used by at least one company that I know of and by a second that I'm not 100% sure about. If it had been GPL'd would they have used it? I'm not entirely certain that's a question that can be answered, but I do think it would have been less likely that they would use it.

I started a new project that I have stalled that is GPL'd but it isn't meant as a library but rather a commandline utility. I'm sure Kenneth and Armin would be disappointed in that (not they care what I do) but I didn't see the need to use a more permissive license at all.

In short: purpose and intended audience should play a role in your license decision, but read and educate yourself about your choices. 


Everything has a time and place.