Thanks Jake! I'll also ask if they are willing to participate in the Julia 
community by implementing a Julia version too! :)

On Sunday, March 23, 2014 6:14:33 PM UTC-7, Jake Bolewski wrote:
>
> Another strategy is to contact the authors directly and ask them if they 
> would consider relicensing their work.  Many people do not really consider 
> the implications of choosing one license over another and just go with a 
> default.  
>
> On Sunday, March 23, 2014 8:59:58 PM UTC-4, John Myles White wrote:
>>
>> Yes, including the same GPL-3 license is sufficient if you’ve derived 
>> your work from a GPL-3 project. You may also need to include the original 
>> headers of the files if they contain attribution information that you are 
>> required to preserve.
>>
>> I don’t think there’s anything dishonest about creating a GPL-3 package. 
>> If you would like to release something under a permissive license, you’ll 
>> have to implement your code from scratch without ever reading any of the 
>> code from a GPL or closed-source implementation.
>>
>> What’s most beneficial depends on context. Many businesses prohibit GPL 
>> software, so many people in the Julia (and Python) communities 
>> intentionally produce MIT or BSD software. But Julia benefits a lot from 
>> having GPL packages when there’s no reasonable alternative.
>>
>>  — John
>>
>> On Mar 23, 2014, at 1:17 PM, Ted Fujimoto <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm trying to familiarize myself with Julia by seeing how it compares to 
>> other languages. I would also like to "open-source" my code if it seems 
>> useful to others. Unfortunately, licenses have made this process 
>> complicated. 
>>
>> A tangible example:
>>
>> I am trying to implement a Julia version of the R package pcalg (
>> http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/pcalg/index.html). Like most R 
>> packages, it is protected under the 
>> GPL-3<http://cran.r-project.org/web/licenses/GPL-3> license. 
>> Also, the license states that it would consider my implementation a 
>> "modification" of the R package. Say I feel that my project is ready to be 
>> open-sourced and put it in a github repository. Is it enough to follow the 
>> RmathDist.jl <https://github.com/JuliaStats/RmathDist.jl> lead and do 
>> the following?:
>> 1. Include the same license in the repository.
>> 2. Cite the R package I modified.
>>
>> A more long term question: I'm guessing a better (and more honest) 
>> alternative to the above would be to implement the relevant algorithms by 
>> looking at the pseudocode and applying it in a way that is friendlier to 
>> future improvements using idiomatic Julia (if it exists yet). After that, 
>> open-source it under the MIT license. Would this be a more beneficial 
>> approach than the "Julia version of an R package" approach?
>>
>>
>>

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