The components which use the GPL license do already include copies of the license -- e.g. https://github.com/JuliaLang/Rmath/blob/master/COPYING. I believe this is true for the other GPL components as well (readline, FFTW, patchelf).
On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 1:57 AM, Hans W Borchers <[email protected]>wrote: > Thanks for the pointer to the discussion on Hacker News. I have to admit I > prefer GPL over BSD or MIT. But I can live with an MIT license if necessary. > > I always thought it necessary to add a version of the original GPL license > -- or at least a link to it -- to software distributed under GPL. In the > Julia distribution I did not find such a link. Did I overlook, or shouldn't > it be added? > > > On Monday, January 27, 2014 1:33:28 AM UTC+1, Stefan Karpinski wrote: > >> John's answer is spot on. I recently wrote this post on hacker news >> summarizing my view on choosing open source licenses: >> >> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7026627 >> >> On Jan 26, 2014, at 5:36 PM, John Myles White <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> Hi Hans, >> >> (1) The GPL makes it impossible for users of Julia to embed Julia as part >> of a closed source product. We’d prefer not to impose that restriction. The >> BSD and MIT licenses are largely identical: the major difference is that >> the BSD license comes in several flavors, not all of which are equivalent >> to the MIT license. The BSD license with two clauses is effectively the >> same license as the MIT license. >> >> (2) All of the code written for Julia by Julia developers is licensed >> under the MIT license. Only some dependencies like FFTW are licensed under >> the GPL, but those dependencies are sufficient to make the aggregate of >> Julia + dependencies fall under the GPL. >> >> (3) Either the removal or the recreation of the GPL components of the >> current Julia distribution would be sufficient to remove the GPL >> restriction on the Julia distribution. Some parts, like Rmath, are easily >> replaceable. Other parts, like SuiteSparse, are much harder to replace and >> would likely have to be removed to provide a non-GPL release. >> >> I hope that helps. >> >> — John >> >>
