Sorry to spam this list with this, but it came up here... Carl Worth wrote: >> http://www.scipy.org/License_Compatibility > > Thanks, John, for sharing this essay. Please allow me to respond to a > few points:
Carl, you have clearly thought this out a lot, and have a real experience with this, so I have a issue that you may have some insights into: I work for the US federal government, and we are not allowed to copyright our work, so be definition, any code we write is in the public domain. This means that we can not release code under the GPL, as you have to hold copyright to do that. This makes our managers nervous about using GPL'd libs (LGPL is fine, I'm a big fan of LGPL) The FSF has unfortunately only ALMOST addressed these issues in their FAQ: http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLUSGov http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLUSGov From the answers to these FAQs, it's clear that we can release our code into the public domain, and it can then be combined with GPL code in a GPL project, so we can contribute to GPL and LGPL projects. However, it still looks like we can't actually release a program ourselves under the GPL, and if a given program contains GPL code, then IIUC, it MUST be released under the GPL, so we've got a problem. We could probably get around all this by developing the code, but having someone else release it, but the implications of that are still confusing to me. To repeat: LGPL is OK -- while we might (and have) contribute to a library we use, we have no need to release a version of it ourselves. Anyway, what all this means is that so far we've avoided GPL code for our projects -- something to keep in mind, the US gov't is a major user of Open Source Projects. -Chris PS: Google is remarkably unhelpful to me in figuring all this out. If anyone has useful references about the US Federal gov't developed and released software an the GPL -- please send me the links! -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Matplotlib-devel mailing list Matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/matplotlib-devel
