profile.py and pstats.py have an inappropriate copyright for some.  These files were contributed by a company that was acquired by Disney.  I have a patch that has passed Disney legal to resolve the problem.

The following is the cogent part of a conversation between Matthias Klose and myself.  He is including information about the issue:

 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2005-February/051450.html

"""
The current license for the Python profiler is not conforming to the
DFSG
(Debian free software guidelines).

http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/node829.html states

 "This permission is explicitly restricted to the copying and
 modification of the software to remain in Python, compiled Python,
 or other languages (such as C) wherein the modified or derived code
 is exclusively imported into a Python module."

The DFSG,
http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-archive.html#s-dfsg,
third paragraph state:

 "Derived Works
   The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must
   allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license
   of the original software."

- Does somebody knows about the history of this license, why it is
 more restricted than the Python license?
- Is there a chance to change the license for these two modules
 (profile.py, pstats.py)?
"""

This is the patch. It was created with

hg diff >WDAS.patch

at the root of the hg repository.  

This patch is just a comment change and should apply to versions of Python currently being update.

New changeset 55219254eb77 by Benjamin Peterson in branch '2.7':
update profile license (closes #12417)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/55219254eb77

New changeset e50963c3119d by Benjamin Peterson in branch '3.2':
update profile license (closes #12417)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/e50963c3119d

New changeset 5ae1711d9c19 by Benjamin Peterson in branch 'default':
merge 3.2 (#12417)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5ae1711d9c19

Great news for Debian users!  Thanks to all involved.

I think we should apply this to earlier applicable versions too.  I would accept this change for Python 2.6.

New changeset 02150e60636b by Benjamin Peterson in branch '2.6':
update profile license (closes #12417)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/02150e60636b

New changeset 633597815463 by Benjamin Peterson in branch '3.1':
update profile license (closes #12417)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/633597815463

Thanks Benjamin!

The former license was also present in the reST documentation.  Attached patch removes it, and also cleans up two lines: it removes a comment that duplicates a docstring, and removes the docstring from profile that you added to pstats :)

Good catch, thanks Eric!  You are a wonderful human being.

I don’t have clones of 2.6 and 3.1, so Benjamin, would you commit this?

New changeset 1b3c21b12e92 by Éric Araujo in branch '3.1':
Remove mentions of previous license in profile module docs (#12417 followup).
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/1b3c21b12e92

New changeset 0fbc56b53848 by Éric Araujo in branch '3.2':
Merge profile docs followup (#12417) from 3.1
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/0fbc56b53848

New changeset b9a95ce2692c by Éric Araujo in branch '2.6':
Remove mentions of previous license in profile module (#12417 followup)
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/b9a95ce2692c

New changeset 25a496966ecf by Éric Araujo in branch '2.7':
Merge #12417 followup, also removing an extra docstring
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/25a496966ecf

Of course, I had all 2.6 and 3.1 changesets in my existing clones :)  I committed my patch to all branches.