License issue: terminal.py contains code licensed under Creative Commons

Code Sample, a copy-pastable example if possible

NA

Problem description

The file pandas/io/formats/terminal.py contains source code taken from stack overflow (it explicitly says this in the terminal.py file). However, the source code that exist in stack overflow is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike, see: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing.

Pandas claims to be BSD 3 compliant, but it actually has code in terminal.py that is not under BSD.

Keep in mind that the part of the code that is under creative commons is affecting the python 2 implementation. The python 3 implementation does not need the code from stack overflow. So, some possible solutions would be (there might be other options that I am not aware of):

1. Remove the code that is under CC. This will make the terminal.py unusable for python 2.
2. Use backports.shutil_get_terminal_size and replace the code under CC. This will make pandas depend on the backports.shutil_get_terminal_size package.
3. Provide a brand new implementation for the part of terminal.py that is under CC.

Expected Output

NA

Output of pd.show_versions()

NA

[harcokuppens]

ok, my official statement:

I’m totally fine too and hereby dual license my code from https://stackoverflow.com/a/566752 under BSD.

Hope you are fine that I literal copied this line from your mail 😉

Best regards, Harco Kuppens

On 18/05/2018 08:45, Vasileios Karavasilis wrote:

Thank you all for the effort and the replies.

However, I would like to ask @harcokuppens https://github.com/harcokuppens to explicitly say something like @weissi https://github.com/weissi said https://github.com/pandas-dev/pandas/issues/21074#issuecomment-389848341, e.g.:

I’m totally fine too and hereby dual license my code from https://stackoverflow.com/a/6550596 under BSD.

PS: I got the explanation that the phrase: |I’m ok that you use my solution for combining these two solutions in one function.| gives exception only to the Pandas project, not every following user of the pandas library. Moreover, some other compatible licenses would be BSD, Apache, or MIT. However, I believe the simplest approach is to use BSD (which Pandas is using).

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[harcokuppens]

On 17/05/2018 11:19, Joris Van den Bossche wrote:

The difficult point is, the answer was posted in 2011, and there
is no contact info in the StackOverflow, we are even not sure if
could reach the author.

The linux code is actually from another answer, and that author has a github profile link. And for the answer you linked to, I am going to do a wild guess and try to ping @harcokuppens https://github.com/harcokuppens (sorry if you are the wrong Harco Kuppens!)

---

@harcokuppens https://github.com/harcokuppens @weissi https://github.com/weissi for some context that I am pinging you here: we used the code from your answers to this SO question: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/566746/how-to-get-linux-console-window-width-in-python. Since the pandas library is BSD, and SO answers back then were this CC-BY-SA, that is compatible. So therefore the question to you both: are you OK with us re-using your code snippet in a BSD licenced library? (and agreeing means I think that you are OK with relicensing this code-snippet to BSD, but no expert on that)

Hi, as you can see in my answer I just combined two solutions found elsewhere. I even mention their sources in my answer.

I’m ok that you use my solution for combining these two solutions in one function.

Best regards, Harco Kuppens

ps. nice to hear somebody is using my comment 😉

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