On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 4:28 AM, Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote:
> On 30 Oct 2014 11:12, "Sturla Molden" <sturla.mol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>> >> [*] Actually, we could, but the binaries would be tainted with a viral
>> >> license.
>> >
>> > And binaries linked with MKL are tainted by a proprietary license...
>> > They
>> > have very similar effects,
>>
>> The MKL license is proprietary but not viral.
>
> If you like, but I think you are getting confused by the vividness of
> anti-GPL rhetoric. GPL and proprietary software are identical in that you
> have to pay some price if you want to legally redistribute derivative works
> (e.g. numpy + MKL/FFTW + other software). For proprietary software the price
> is money and other random more or less onerous conditions (e.g.
> anti-benchmarking and anti-reverse-engineering clauses are common). For GPL
> software the price is that you have to let people reuse your source code for
> free. That's literally all that "viral" means.

I wrote a summary of the MKL license problems here:

https://github.com/numpy/numpy/wiki/Numerical-software-on-Windows#blas--lapack-libraries

In summary, if you distribute something with the MKL you have to:

* require your users to agree to a license forbidding them from
reverse-engineering the MKL
* indemnify Intel against being sued as a result of using MKL in your binaries

I think the users are not allowed to further distribute any part of
the MKL libraries, but I am happy to be corrected on that.

Cheers,

Matthew
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