Thanks for thinking this through a bit more.

I would be wary of changing the Python license -- it's got loads of baggage
and legally I don't know if we can make that stick. Basically I think we
should let leave well enough alone and let sleeping dogs lie. So I am not
keen to add a sentence to the license.html file or to the LICENSE file in
the repo and distro.

But what I think we *can* do is add that sentence to the introduction of
each of the documentation volumes (tutorial, library, reference and maybe
1-2 more). Ideally we would also do something to the Sphinx template to add
this (and the CC0 logo) to the bottom of each HTML page next to the
copyright notice, as you propose. I'm no Sphinx expert so I don't know how
to do that, but I'm sure it's technically feasible and I can't see any
legal objection to it.

Maybe you could work on a PR with a patch to the doc files? (Maybe also
file a bpo issue first to track it.) Final approval may require a roundtrip
to the PSF's lawyer, but that's usually easy enough, and it helps
tremendously if we have a PR with proposed text.

PS. If you can't find where the copyright notice is in the Sphinx
templates, maybe it's part of the python.org website? That has its own
repo, follow the "Found a bug?" link on each page.

--Guido

On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 6:53 AM Todd <toddr...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am not really a lawyer, so I don't know for certain how to effectively
> do this or how fine-grained it has to be.  I can float some possibilities,
> but someone more knowledgeable would have to assess them.
>
> There is a page on the python website about the license [1].  As far as I
> can tell this page is duplicated in the "LICENSE" file in the root of the
> Python sources (or there is something very similar).  It may be possible to
> simply put some text there saying that all code present in the
> documentation is under the CC0 license (probably with the text of the
> license somewhere).  This would be a good thing to do, in my opinion, no
> matter what, but whether it is sufficient I don't know.  If that is
> sufficient, I think that would be the ideal solution.
>
> Perhaps text like: "The Python __ver__ software and documentation is
> available under the [Python-2.0 license].  However, all code found in the
> documentation has been released into the public domain or, in jurisdictions
> where that is not allowed, is available under the [Creative Commons Zero
> (CC0) license]."  ([] indicate links to the license text) I think this
> would probably be best under the "Terms and conditions" section, but before
> actual text of the license.
>
> If that isn't sufficient, it may be possible to also put that at the
> bottom of all the documentation pages, where the copyright text already
> is.  I assume the copyright text is some sort of automatically-added
> footer, so hopefully this would be something that could be done once.
> Perhaps something like "Code found on this page is under the [CC0
> license]".  There would need to be care to make sure that this is applied
> to the code in the documentation, rather than the html and/or javascript
> code underlying the web page.  I don't know if my text does that or not.
>
> If even that isn't sufficient, there may be some way to add the CC0 icon
> [3] to every piece of code in the documentation automatically, but I don't
> know enough about how the code is generated to say, and I would hope that
> wouldn't be necessary.
>
> Another possibility would be to amend the Python license itself.
> Currently the license is known as the Python-2.0 license [4].  This would
> probably be the Python-2.1 license.  However, not being a lawyer I would
> not presume to touch the license text.
>
> [1] https://docs.python.org/license.html
> [2]
> https://docs.python.org/license.html#terms-and-conditions-for-accessing-or-otherwise-using-python
> [3] https://licensebuttons.net/p/zero/1.0/88x31.png
> [4] https://spdx.org/licenses/Python-2.0.html
>
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 6:19 PM Guido van Rossum <gu...@python.org> wrote:
>
>> OK, let's see if we can do CC0. Todd, do you want to read through the
>> link Steven gave and find out how we should apply this, either to just the
>> itertools examples, or possibly to all examples in the docs?
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 2:01 PM Steven D'Aprano <st...@pearwood.info>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 24, 2019 at 12:36:40PM -0700, Christopher Barker wrote:
>>> > IANAL, but if we could put a clause in the docs that all recipes are
>>> in the
>>> > public domain, that would be great.
>>>
>>> The public domain is *exceedingly* problematic. Many juristictions do
>>> not have any legal process for putting things into the public domain
>>> before the standard copyright expiry, or even prohibit the attempt to
>>> surrender such rights.
>>>
>>> That's why the Creative Commons folks have their CC0 licence, which
>>> seems to be the most appropriate for this case.
>>>
>>> https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/
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>>
>>
>> --
>> --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
>> *Pronouns: he/him **(why is my pronoun here?)*
>> <http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-singular-pronoun-can-change-the-world/>
>>
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
*Pronouns: he/him **(why is my pronoun here?)*
<http://feministing.com/2015/02/03/how-using-they-as-a-singular-pronoun-can-change-the-world/>
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