I’d like to know about licenses in Python program distributions. This is the scenario: let’s say one would distribute a Python program for Windows, created with PyInstaller as a single executable file, which bundles Python 3.5 (with Tkinter libraries for the GUI) and some packages, downloaded with pip. The packages are under BSD license, for instance:
- xlrd
- prettytable
Notice that I’m not distributing the source code, just the PyInstaller executable, which is a single bundle executable file.
How should the user take care of the program license? Should him provide just its license or should him add the documentation about all the modules bundled into the executable?
What you need to do depends on the license of the packages.
The license of both products that you specifically mention have this clause:
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
You can find this clause here for xlrd and here for prettytable.
This means that you must include copyright (and you usually include the license information) for these libraries somewhere. These license’s don’t require you to include the full license, but it’s generally a good idea, since it lets the recipient know their rights with respect to all modules in your software.
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