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Does that mean Shadow can base his GUI client on the Bram Cohen's BT client?

It means I could if I wanted to adopt his license. I really don't.

He can, if he wants to.
The licence change does not change anything exept that you have to publish the source code of your modifications too, wich TheSHAD0W does anyway.

The new license is a bit more restrictive in that it is more like the GPL.

I'm sorry, I've just got to rant here. I still can't understand why Bram changed the license. A restrictive OSL really isn't appropriate for the Python codebase; Python doesn't play especially well with other languages, unless you don't mind packaging the VM into your product. Most products incorporating BitTorrent as a library have intelligently used libtorrent instead, which is C++ based and under a BSD license similar to BitTorrent's original license.

The only cases where the BT Python codebase has been reused is in some other open-source BT clients like G3, ABC and mine; Blizzard's downloader, which was admittedly stupid; some assholes who incorporated spyware into their distro, but who wouldn't pay attention to an OSL anyway; and some Chinese porters, who also don't care.

I suppose I could change licenses, but I think it's important for at least one good, experimental codebase to be as free as possible, and because of it I feel I have to break with Bram & company.

Now i realise your Motives. Thanks for the Detailed response.

I agree Blizzard Downloader should be a bit better thought out. I tried to send in my suggestions but oh well....

SHADOW
I was looking at the new BT source code that Bram has on his website and it looked to me like some of your work was included in it (ie. your btdownloadcurses.py mod). So wouldn't that mean that your ALREADY publishing the source code of you mods with Bram's "library"? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's the reverse. He's re-publishing my code, but since I'm the original author I can maintain it as available under MIT as well.

So does this mean we won't get a SHAD0Wised version of the pretty new 3.9.1 bittorrent?

Are you really bothered by this at all? I know it means a different licensing and some possibly major changes, but is it something worth discussing or were you preparing to shift the license anyway?