The SIESTA developers have decided to change the licensing conditions for the
code. From now on, SIESTA will be released under the GPL open-source license
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License).
In the past SIESTA had always been free for academic use, but re-distribution
was not permitted. It is expected that the move to an open-source license will
be beneficial for the SIESTA project and its large user community. On the one
hand, the program will be able to incorporate functionality already existing in
other GPL codes. On the other, the barrier for contributors will be lowered, as
new developments will be more easily re-distributed.
Development and distribution of the program is now centralized at the Launchpad
platform:
http://launchpad.net/siesta
Users can download tarballs of released versions, as well as clone the source
branches of the appropriate series directly. Prospective contributors are
encouraged to become familiar with the Launchpad workflow and to read the
specific documentation that is being prepared for Siesta development.
The current stable series is '4.0', which is in advanced beta stage. Users are
encouraged to download it and use it for production runs.
