On 09/06/2008, Adam C Powell IV <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > And after three weeks in the NEW queue, OpenCASCADE was ACCEPTED this > morning into unstable! Yay!
Awesome! Good job! This means it will make it into lenny? Very good news! > I think I will postpone re-splitting the package and ripping out the > non-free parts I admit I haven't really been following the discussion which got very technical, but now that it looks like I (er, we) have more software readily available, I got curious. From the webpage, it looks like a very powerful suite for numerical work, and I already see some things I could use it for. However, I am a strong believer in software freedom, especially, *especially*, when it comes to scientific software (highest priority for free software, in my opinion). I tried to understand right now exactly why OpenCASCADE is non-free, and the restriction seems to be about the method which modifications have to be published. Is this correct? There also seems to be a plainly proprietary component in it? I see this happen so frequently, by developers who seem to misunderstand the nature or motive of free software, particularly the GPL, and want to fix it, often producing non-free results.[1] Have you spoken to upstream about a possible relicensing? I think upstream seldom chooses to change licensing terms, but a polite request might still be in order. I couldn't easily track down in the discussion if you had already done so or not, and what upstream responded. Congrats on the packaging, - Jordi G. H. [1] I myself am sometimes a slight perpetrator of this too. I would like to create a license which forbids military use of my software, but I err on the side of the many free lawyers and their often lauded law-fu used in the making of the GPL, so I choose not to add such a restriction. Not that I think my software is particularly useful for the military, but if there is anything I could do to hinder professional murderers worldwide, I would do it. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]