pyx

[William Stein]

Hello,

Some of the Sage developers are considering including Pyx
(http://pyx.sourceforge.net/)
in Sage (http://sagemath.org). One issue is that I think Pyx is
currently licensed GPL v2 only.
Unfortunately Sage will soon have to start including several new
versions of GNU programs
such as GMP, GNUTLs, GSL, etc., and these are all licensed under "GPL
v3 or greater".
Also PolyBoRi (http://polybori.sourceforge.net/) will soon be in Sage,
and it is also "GPL v3"
licensed. Unfortunately, it is a copyright violation to combine GPL
v2 and GPL v3 software
together and redistribute it, since the FSF decided to make GPL v3 be
GPL v2 incompatible.
So, I'm curious whether the Pyx team has any plans to change their
license to "GPL v2 or v3"
or to "GPL v2 or greater"?

This will help us in deciding whether including Pyx in Sage is an
option for us.

Thanks! And thanks again for a great Python library.

-- William

--
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[Ondrej Certik]

On Nov 25, 2007 5:19 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Some of the Sage developers are considering including Pyx
> (http://pyx.sourceforge.net/)
> in Sage (http://sagemath.org). One issue is that I think Pyx is
> currently licensed GPL v2 only.
> Unfortunately Sage will soon have to start including several new
> versions of GNU programs
> such as GMP, GNUTLs, GSL, etc., and these are all licensed under "GPL
> v3 or greater".
> Also PolyBoRi (http://polybori.sourceforge.net/) will soon be in Sage,
> and it is also "GPL v3"
> licensed. Unfortunately, it is a copyright violation to combine GPL
> v2 and GPL v3 software
> together and redistribute it, since the FSF decided to make GPL v3 be

If it is true that SAGE is legaly unable to include GPL v2 only and
GPL v3 only programs, not modifying them, not relicensing them, but
just
calling them from Python, then FSF did a terrible move, against the
free software and against the end users, which GPL is supposed to
protect.

Ondrej

[William Stein]

On Nov 25, 2007 4:06 AM, Ondrej Certik <ond...@certik.cz> wrote:
>
> On Nov 25, 2007 5:19 AM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > Some of the Sage developers are considering including Pyx
> > (http://pyx.sourceforge.net/)
> > in Sage (http://sagemath.org). One issue is that I think Pyx is
> > currently licensed GPL v2 only.
> > Unfortunately Sage will soon have to start including several new
> > versions of GNU programs
> > such as GMP, GNUTLs, GSL, etc., and these are all licensed under "GPL
> > v3 or greater".
> > Also PolyBoRi (http://polybori.sourceforge.net/) will soon be in Sage,
> > and it is also "GPL v3"
> > licensed. Unfortunately, it is a copyright violation to combine GPL
> > v2 and GPL v3 software
> > together and redistribute it, since the FSF decided to make GPL v3 be
>
> If it is true that SAGE is legaly unable to include GPL v2 only and
> GPL v3 only programs, not modifying them, not relicensing them, but
> just
> calling them from Python,

We're not talking about just calling them from Python. If you take a
substantial
GPL v2 only Python library, take another substantial GPL v3 Python library, say,
then install them into Python, and redistribute the result, you're
creating a derived
work which according to GPL v2 must be GPL v2, but according to GPL v3 must
also be GPL v3. Since v2 and v3 are mutually incompatible, this is a license
violation.

> then FSF did a terrible move, against the
> free software and against the end users, which GPL is supposed to
> protect.

Yes, FSF did indeed make a terrible move. It seriously pisses me off.

Note that SAGE has *not* yet included any GPL v3 software yet -- if we
wanted to "take a stand against FSF though", it would require somebody forking
GSL, GMP, GNUtls, etc., etc..; I don't think anybody is seriously interested
in doing that.

-- William

[boo...@u.washington.edu]

> If it is true that SAGE is legaly unable to include GPL v2 only and
> GPL v3 only programs, not modifying them, not relicensing them, but
> just
> calling them from Python, then FSF did a terrible move, against the
> free software and against the end users, which GPL is supposed to
> protect.
>
> Ondrej

Yes. And disturbingly, they are wholly unapologetic about the entire ordeal, and suggest that sign everything as "GPL v2 or later", ensuring that any v2+ software is "locked" into v4, v5, etc., no matter what draconian changes are made to the license. And if you don't like it, you can rewrite your entire project, from the ground up. RMS is very much taking the path of every "communist leader" who came before him (y'know, except without the shooting people).

[William Stein]

On Nov 26, 2007 3:04 AM, Joerg Lehmann <joe...@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Hello,

>
> On 24.11.07, William Stein wrote:
> > Some of the Sage developers are considering including Pyx
> > (http://pyx.sourceforge.net/)
> > in Sage (http://sagemath.org). One issue is that I think Pyx is
> > currently licensed GPL v2 only.
>

> A bit embarrassingly, the license information on our web page is not
> entirely correct. If you look into the PyX sources, you will find
> out that PyX is licensed under GPL v2 and later. We also do not intend
> to change this. So, license wise there should be no problem for you to
> include PyX in Sage.
>
> We will correct the license information on the web page, as soon as
> possible.
>

Excellent. This is exactly what I had hoped for. Thanks!

By the way, if you have any thoughts about how / if / in what way Pyx should or
could be used from sage please let me know.

-- William