[Python-modules-team] Bug#952641: scipy: What is the license of scipy/stats/stats.py?

[Diane Trout]

Source: scipy
Severity: serious
Tags: upstream
Justification: Debian policy 2.1 "Debian Freee Software Guidelines"

Dear Maintainer,

While reviewing the dask source (which is also affected by this bug) I noticed
this header in scipy/stats/stats.py

# Copyright 2002 Gary Strangman.  All rights reserved
# Copyright 2002-2016 The SciPy Developers
#
# The original code from Gary Strangman was heavily adapted for
# use in SciPy by Travis Oliphant.  The original code came with the
# following disclaimer:
#
# This software is provided "as-is".  There are no expressed or implied
# warranties of any kind, including, but not limited to, the warranties
# of merchantability and fitness for a given application.  In no event
# shall Gary Strangman be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental,
# special, exemplary or consequential damages (including, but not limited
# to, loss of use, data or profits, or business interruption) however
# caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict
# liability or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way
# out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of
# such damage.

Viewable at
https://salsa.debian.org/python-
team/modules/scipy/-/blob/master/scipy/stats/stats.py

The initial copyright as written says "all rights reserved" and the disclaimer
does not seem to include any rights to redistribute, which would be a violation
of the DFSG.

I decided to go look up the original stats.py module by Gary Strangman, and the
original site no longer exists.
http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/Neural_Systems_Group/gary/python/stats.py

I picked a random version of it from archive.org which lists a GPL-2 license
and has the same disclaimer.
https://web.archive.org/web/20051224003609/http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/Neural_Systems_Group/gary/python/stats.py

# Copyright (c) 1999-2002 Gary Strangman; All Rights Reserved.
#
# This software is distributable under the terms of the GNU
# General Public License (GPL) v2, the text of which can be found at
# http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html. Installing, importing or otherwise
# using this module constitutes acceptance of the terms of this License.
#
# Disclaimer
#
# This software is provided "as-is".  There are no expressed or implied
# warranties of any kind, including, but not limited to, the warranties
# of merchantability and fittness for a given application.  In no event
# shall Gary Strangman be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental,
# special, exemplary or consequential damages (including, but not limited
# to, loss of use, data or profits, or business interruption) however
# caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict
# liability or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way
# out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of
# such damage.
#
# Comments and/or additions are welcome (send e-mail to:
# strang at nmr.mgh.harvard.edu).
#
"""

I didn't find a specific license statement about stats.py in scipy's
LICENSES.txt,

After digging I did find a mention that stats.py was relicensed as MIT as part
of statslib in 2007.
https://code.google.com/archive/p/python-statlib/

So I think everything is fine, but I think there should be a better record of
everything being fine.

Diane



-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'testing-debug'), (500, 'oldstable-debug'), (500,
'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (110, 'unstable'), (100, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.4.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash