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Enthought Python Distribution (EPD)

Frequently Asked Questions

This page contains information about generally asked questions for EPD. For more technical questions, please see our community-based FAQ at https://svn.enthought.com/epd/wiki/FAQ.

  • Can you give me a quick overview of the license terms?

    • Sure. (We don't like to read those long things either, but we do encourage you to refer to the actual license as the final word.) The real intent of the license is to provide a service for those firms who plan on using our bundle of software (EPD) in their commercial operation. Academic and hobbyist use is, and will remain, free. We've had numerous requests for Enthought to be a supporting entity behind a distribution that contains many of the interesting libraries that the EPD holds. This comes at a cost, so that's why we charge for commercial (and governmental) use of the software. If you're not sure if you should pay or not, drop us a line (info at enthought dot com) -- we're actually pretty relaxed about it.

  • What's the difference between EPD and ETS?

    • EPD (the Enthought Python Distribution) and ETS (the Enthought Tool Suite) are two completely different things. EPD is a distribution of Python, the programming language. As mentioned above, EPD is made available through a subscription model--free for academic and non-profit private-sector use, and for an annual fee for Commercial and Governmental use. EPD includes dozens of libraries out of the box. Many of these libraries are written and maintained by third parties (not Enthought), and are distributed with EPD under their particular Open Source license terms. EPD also includes a set of Open Source tools that Enthought has written and released under a BSD license--these are referred to as the Enthought Tool Suite (ETS).

    ETS is a growing set of Open Source (BSD) code (code.enthought.com) that is and will remain free. There is an active community of authorship and use around the ETS libraries. Because of the BSD license, anyone can use the ETS code in any way they want, including selling it on the street corner. While ETS and all of its dependencies are included in EPD, ETS is also available separately in source or egg form.

  • I don't see library X included. How do you determine what is included? Do you take suggestions?

    • A better question might be "have you ever seen a library you didn't like?" Seriously, we'll consider any suggestion of libraries for inclusion into EPD. The main considerations are 1) how painful is it to build? 2) does it have a permissive license? 3) how useful is it to the target community? and 4) is the functionality already there? (Notice there's no mention of disk footprint--that may be a consideration in the future, but for now, we're treating disk space as an abundant resource).

  • There seems to be a bug in <package-name-here>. When will you fix it?

    • Enthought provides support for installing, updating, and uninstalling EPD under the terms of the EPD license. If you'd like us to support or maintain an individual library contained in EPD (or some or all of the individual libraries) we'll be happy to negotiate a separate service agreement, but that kind of support is not included in the EPD license.

  • EPD is big. How can I get a CD or DVD copy?

    • Drop us a line (info at enthought dot com). We'll be glad to send media for a modest fee.

  • I work for a large company. Can I get a site license?

    • You sure can! We offer an Enterprise license for EPD (EPDE, as we call it). This is appropriate for companies with potential users in the hundreds or companies or agencies that have specific deployment needs. There's more about this at the Enterprise Edition web page.