Hello, I want to make an observation concerning the change in GNU GSL licence (in GNU GSL-1.10) from version 2 to version 3. In the GNU GSL website,
(Before you keep reading, let me tell you that I'am a strong supporter of frree software in general, and of the GPL in general). The release anoucement says "The license has been updated to GNU GPL version 3. Programs using the library should be updated to the same version of the license." (http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gsl/2007-09/msg00000.html) Reading that mail it may seem that GPL 3 is just an upgrade of GPL 2. But it is not because acording to http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html both licences are indeed incompatible. "Is GPLv3 compatible with GPLv2? No. Some of the requirements in GPLv3, such as the requirement to provide Installation Information, do not exist in GPLv2. As a result, the licenses are not compatible: if you tried to combine code released under both these licenses, you would violate section 6 of GPLv2. However, if code is released under GPL “version 2 or later,” that is compatible with GPLv3 because GPLv3 is one of the options it permits." Now this raises the following issue: some proyects incorporate the GNU GSL and also some other libraries that are released under the GNU GPL version 2 only (One example is Sage http://www.sagemath.org/, that I think that is indeed a very important project, as it covers something that was missing in free software: a software integrating many of the free software projects for doing mathematics). Another example mightbe Labplot (http://labplot.sourceforge.net/) In some cases, the authors of the other libraries might want to change its licence to GPL v3, some other perhaps no, and in other cases might be very difficult to contact all the copyright holders (copyright might be spread over hundres of people). Then, that kind of project won't be able to use the new version of the GNU GSL (even thought that version is indeed binary compatible, and mostly a bug-fix release over 1.9) For project using gnu gsl (that mostly are related to mathematics or numerical analysis), the issues that GPL v3 was designed to address seem to be irrelevant. What has to do gsl with DRM ? So I see that change in the licence can create legal troubles to free software projects without any protection for them. Is it reasonable to use GPL v3 for all projects, regardless of the legal incompatibilities this might create? I don't know if that is possible, but I would suggest reconsider relicencing GNU GSL under GPL v2 or any later version. This would avoid a lot of troubles to people developing free software for mathematics. Pablo _______________________________________________ Help-gsl mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-gsl
