William Stein wrote: > On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 11:36 AM, David Joyner <wdjoy...@gmail.com> wrote: >> The solution is simple. Have two versions of a package, >> say >> >> my-gpl-package.spkg >> my-gpl-package-with-all-nongpl-dependencies-autoloaded.spkg. >> >> The last differs from the first only in the license and a few lines of >> the installer script. > > That's really simple for you. From *my* point of view as > the-guy-who-has-to-post-all the spkg's, and make-sure-they-work, and > complain when they don't, the above just doubles my workload. > > Regarding: "I was told that a GPL package must not install a non-GPL package." > > The above can never legally come up, right? If a program Foo is "GPL" > and fundamentally depends on a program Bar that is licensed > GPL-incompatible, then distributing Foo at all violates the GPL right? > So if the above situation ever came up, I would not host said spkg > on sagemath.org, since I would be a copyright violator. >
There are functions in Sage (a GPL thing) which fundamentally rely on non-GPL things (for example, the mathematica interpreter function, or the interface to nauty, etc.). We still think it's fine to ship Sage, though. I thought my-gpl-package-with-all-nongpl-dependencies-autoloaded.spkg didn't mean that you were distributing the gpl and nongpl things together, but rather that when you installed the gpl package (something that the *user* is doing, not the distributor), the install script downloaded and installed the non-gpl program as well. The difference between the two spkgs would literally be: sage -i my-nongpl.spkg in the install file. Since you are *not* distributing the programs together, I don't see how the GPL applies. The *user* is the one that is running the command to download the non-gpl program, and all linking or other dependencies are happening on the user's machine, at their request. The result is not being distributed. Thanks, Jason --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
