About license of nauty and poset generator

[Jori Mäntysalo]

More about licenses, see http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/14110 . This is a
non-technical issue. Who wants to contact the makers of nauty (and poset
generation program)? I do not want, as I don't know that much about
licenses and copyright issues.

I am quite sure that they have not really thinked about the restrictions.
We don't have just programs anymore, but metaprograms like Sage containing
other software.

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Monday, 29 June 2015 12:30:20 UTC+1, Jori Mäntysalo wrote:

More about licenses, see http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/14110 . This is a
non-technical issue. Who wants to contact the makers of nauty (and poset
generation program)? I do not want, as I don't know that much about
licenses and copyright issues. 

I am quite sure that they have not really thinked about the restrictions.

 
They think of their copyright notice as a political statement, I suppose. For what else can be said about
forbidding the use for military purposes. Such a licence obviously cannot be enforced (without starting a war :-)).

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Mon, 29 Jun 2015, Dima Pasechnik wrote:

>> More about licenses, see http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/14110 .

> They think of their copyright notice as a political statement, I
> suppose. For what else can be said about forbidding the use for military
> purposes. Such a licence obviously cannot be enforced (without starting
> a war :-)).

Well, at least Finnish Defence Forces would not use a restricted program
for our mandatory military service.

But I am sure that this discussion has already been done somewhere. Of
course everybody wants that programs are only used for "good" practices. I
am an atheist -- but my free code can be used to promote religion. And so
on.

Somewhere must be a well-written essay "Thou shall not restrict your
free programs to be almost-free".

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[Tom Boothby]

I spoke with Brendan McKay personally less than a month ago. He is
fully aware about the restrictions, and utterly unmoved by the
difficulty his license creates.

[kcrisman]

Somewhere must be a well-written essay "Thou shall not restrict your
free programs to be almost-free".

 

Well, that is the whole GPL/BSD/public domain thing...

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2015, Tom Boothby wrote:

> I spoke with Brendan McKay personally less than a month ago. He is
> fully aware about the restrictions, and utterly unmoved by the
> difficulty his license creates.

Duh. Then what he means when saying that we can ignore it for
incorporation into Sage?

Actually, about non-military restriction... One professor at unit where I
work taught mathematics at Military Academia of Finland before. Well, I
think he does not do research related to defence forces; and in any case,
graph automorphism may not play any role in it anyway. But in principle,
what should be done to make things really right? Should I remove nauty
from our Sage server to be sure? Or should every user be forced to click
"OK, I won't use functions ... if I do research with non-trivial military
use."? Or have front page of server containing those restrictions?

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[William Stein]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:09 AM, kcrisman <kcri...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Somewhere must be a well-written essay "Thou shall not restrict your
>> free programs to be almost-free".

Here's one of those essays - the author definitely put thought into it:

http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html

>>
>
> Well, that is the whole GPL/BSD/public domain thing...
>

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--
William (http://wstein.org)

[Tom Boothby]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Jori Mäntysalo <Jori.Ma...@uta.fi> wrote:

> Duh. Then what he means when saying that we can ignore it for incorporation
> into Sage?

Only he can clarify that. If he releases the source under a
GPL-compatible license, then we have evidence that he means what he
says. His verbal permission for us to include GPL-incompatible code
into our source tree does not constitute sound legal advice.

The GPL is viral. When we distribute Sage, any other GPL-compatible
software can incorporate any portion of Sage. If he gives us
permission to distribute nauty under the GPL, then he's transitively
giving the Open Sniper Project (I just made that up... I hope)
permission to incorporate nauty as well.

If he gives us permission to distribute nauty, then we need to get
that permission in writing.

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2015, William Stein wrote:

>>> Somewhere must be a well-written essay "Thou shall not restrict your
>>> free programs to be almost-free".
>
> Here's one of those essays - the author definitely put thought into it:
>
> http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html

Good text. But it does not quite address the question that I think: "Why
should I let bad guys to use my software?" Or "Why should anyone voting
for Republican Party make software that Communist Party of USA can use?"

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[William Stein]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:28 AM, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Jori Mäntysalo <Jori.Ma...@uta.fi> wrote:
>
>> Duh. Then what he means when saying that we can ignore it for incorporation
>> into Sage?
>
>
> Only he can clarify that. If he releases the source under a
> GPL-compatible license, then we have evidence that he means what he
> says. His verbal permission for us to include GPL-incompatible code
> into our source tree does not constitute sound legal advice.

The trac ticket has a claim that there is an "in writing" email:

XX Changed 29 hours ago by jdemeyer; Replying to jmantysalo:
XX I asked from Brendan McKay? "Nauty.h contains copyright
XX with 'exception of sale for profit or application with nontrivial military
XX significance.' Does this apply to whole package?" and he
XX answered: "It applies to all of the nauty files, but for
XX incorporation into Sage you can ignore it.
XX > Can you give the complete contents of this email exchange with McKay?

If we can get the complete raw email message (including headers), and
maybe get him to further confirm it, with him confirming that he
understands what including code with Sage means (namely that it is
GPLv3+'d), then that would work.

That's the whole point of this discussion -- the OP is asking for
somebody to volunteer to write to McKay to *further* clarify his
already-given permission. The collective "guess" in this thread seems
to be that when McKay realizes what "incorporation into Sage" implies
(namely his code is then GPLv3+), he will change his mind.

Despite what Tom says, I think it can't hurt to ask again.

-- William


--
William (http://wstein.org)

[Tom Boothby]

I never said it'd hurt to ask again. Heck, I'd even send the email.
As far as I know, Robert Miller and I are the only people who have
read the source of NICE, and we're both in industry now. I need
faster isomorphism tests than Sage provides, and neither of us has
made any improvements to that code for years. Inclusion of nauty
would be awesome.

To clarify: what I'm uncomfortable with is the statement "you can
ignore it [for Sage]". If that means that we can _delete_ the
restriction from his license file, then that's great and a complete
raw email message might hold up in court. If it means that we are
expected to ship code containing a GPL-incompatible license, that
sounds like pretty shaky ground from my lay-understanding: his
statement implies (to me) that he does not recognize that the GPL is
viral (or does not recognize that Sage is under the GPL). Best to
make sure he knows what he's getting into.

[William Stein]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 5:25 PM, Tom Boothby <tomas....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I never said it'd hurt to ask again. Heck, I'd even send the email.
> As far as I know, Robert Miller and I are the only people who have
> read the source of NICE, and we're both in industry now. I need
> faster isomorphism tests than Sage provides, and neither of us has
> made any improvements to that code for years. Inclusion of nauty
> would be awesome.
>
> To clarify: what I'm uncomfortable with is the statement "you can
> ignore it [for Sage]". If that means that we can _delete_ the
> restriction from his license file, then that's great and a complete
> raw email message might hold up in court. If it means that we are
> expected to ship code containing a GPL-incompatible license, that
> sounds like pretty shaky ground from my lay-understanding: his
> statement implies (to me) that he does not recognize that the GPL is
> viral (or does not recognize that Sage is under the GPL). Best to
> make sure he knows what he's getting into.

Cool -- I completely and totally agree with you.

William

--
William (http://wstein.org)

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2015, Tom Boothby wrote:

> To clarify: what I'm uncomfortable with is the statement "you can
> ignore it [for Sage]". If that means that we can _delete_ the
> restriction from his license file, then that's great and a complete
> raw email message might hold up in court.

Maybe. But it would be quite nasty to interpret it that way, if we know
that propably it is not what was meant.

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[Tom Boothby]

On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 11:14 PM, Jori Mäntysalo <Jori.Ma...@uta.fi> wrote:
>
> Maybe. But it would be quite nasty to interpret it that way, if we know that
> propably it is not what was meant.

You say nasty, I say that's the legal ramification of distributing his
code under GPLv3+. We agree on this point, which is why I think we
need clarification before moving forward.

[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2015-07-01 08:14, Jori Mäntysalo wrote:
> ...if we know that propably it is not what was meant.
I think nobody really knows what was meant, which is why we should ask.

[Dima Pasechnik]

we now have a permission from Brinkmann to release his part of the code under whatever license we see fit; 

we already obtained a permission from from Brendan McKay to release nauty as a GPLed Sage package, so we

are all set for this to go ahead.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 11:38:26 +0100

From: Gunnar Brinkmann <Gunnar.B...@ugent.be>

To: Dima Pasechnik <dmitrii....@cs.ox.ac.uk>, Jeroen Demeyer <jdem...@cage.ugent.be>

Subject: Code generating finite posets of given size

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.3.0

Hi Dima,

Jeroen just asked whether I could explicitly declare that it is OK to

use the poset generating code in

Sage. The problem with the (special) nauty file was already solved by

Brendan, so with this mail I declare that

you can also use the (rest of the) poset generating code in Sage under

any license you need to make it available.

Best wishes,

Gunnar

--

Gunnar Brinkmann

Applied Mathematics, Computer Science and Statistics

Ghent University

Krijgslaan 281 - S9

B - 9000 Ghent

email: Gunnar.B...@UGent.be

phone: +32-9-264.48.07, Fax: +32-9-264.49.95

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Monday, 29 June 2015 12:30:20 UTC+1, Jori Mäntysalo wrote:

[Dima Pasechnik]

Here is a ticket with the new nauty release, and a proposal to make it a standard package.

http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19919

Please vote (it is already an optional package for long time, I think), and there are no more formal copyright reasons preventing us from having it standard.

Dima

[David Roe]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:

Here is a ticket with the new nauty release, and a proposal to make it a standard package.

http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19919

Please vote (it is already an optional package for long time, I think), and there are no more formal copyright reasons preventing us from having it standard.

+1 for it to be standard.

David

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[David Joyner]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 4:12 PM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Here is a ticket with the new nauty release, and a proposal to make it a
> standard package.
> http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19919
>
> Please vote (it is already an optional package for long time, I think), and
> there are no more formal copyright reasons preventing us from having it
> standard.
>

+1

[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2016-01-20 22:12, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> Here is a ticket with the new nauty release, and a proposal to make it a
> standard package.
> http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19919
>
> Please vote (it is already an optional package for long time, I think),
> and there are no more formal copyright reasons preventing us from having
> it standard.

To be clear: Dima is proposing to make a forked received-by-email
version of Nauty standard, not the "official" nauty. I have my doubts
about this.

[Dima Pasechnik]

Spell out your doubts then. 

Surely, if the official nauty got another licence it would have solved the problem easier. 

The diff has 77 changed files with 8,431 additions and 1,474 deletions, see

https://github.com/dimpase/nauty_sagemath

[François Bissey]

On 01/21/16 12:29, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>
>
> On Wednesday, 20 January 2016 22:44:06 UTC, Jeroen Demeyer wrote:
>
> On 2016-01-20 22:12, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> > Here is a ticket with the new nauty release, and a proposal to
> make it a
> > standard package.
> > http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19919
> <http://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/19919>
> >
> > Please vote (it is already an optional package for long time, I
> think),
> > and there are no more formal copyright reasons preventing us from
> having
> > it standard.
>
> To be clear: Dima is proposing to make a forked received-by-email
> version of Nauty standard, not the "official" nauty. I have my doubts
> about this.
>
> Spell out your doubts then.
>
> Surely, if the official nauty got another licence it would have solved
> the problem easier.

> The diff has*77 changed files* with 8,431 additions and 1,474 deletions, see
> https://github.com/dimpase/nauty_sagemath

As far as I am concerned as a distro packager that's not nauty anymore
that's sagemath-nauty or nauty-sagemath and that's a different package.
On top of the problem created the two probably collide with each other
(files with same name in the same location are installed).

If you are going to use a fork, fork it harder (change the name).

Francois

[Jori Mäntysalo]

On Wed, 20 Jan 2016, Dima Pasechnik wrote:

> Here is a ticket with the new nauty release, and a proposal to make it a
> standard package.

I vote 'yes'.

--
Jori Mäntysalo

[Jeroen Demeyer]

On 2016-01-21 00:29, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
> Surely, if the official nauty got another licence it would have solved
> the problem easier.

Maybe you could ask McKay if he is willing to license *every* version of
nauty (past and future) with a GPL-compatible license? If we are only
allowed to ship one specific version of nauty in Sage, we should not
make it standard since it won't be maintainable.

Jeroen.

[Dima Pasechnik]

I have asked, and here is his proposed licence for 2.6:

(I have asked him to deal with part D better, too)

This is the copyright notice for the software package Nauty and

Traces, versions 2.6 and later.

Four categories of software are included in the package:

A. All files not listed as B-D below, copyright Brendan McKay (1984-)

B. Files traces.h and traces.h, copyright Adolfo Piperno (2008-)

C. File watercluster2.c, copyright Gunnar Brinkmann (2009-)

D. Files planarity.h and planarity.c, copyright Magma project

   (University of Sydney)

Regarding files in classes A, B and C:

   Permission is hereby given for the use, distribution and

   modification of this software subject to the following.

   * You must include this copyright notice with all distributed 

     copies of this software, including modified copies.

   * You must clearly mark modified versions of this software

     as differing from the original.

Regarding files in class D:

   Permission should be sought from the Magma project.

Regarding all the files in the package:

   This software is only provided "as is". No guarantee is made

   as to the suitability of this software for any purpose. No

   responsibility will be taken by the authors or their employers

   for any misfortune which befalls you because of its use. Your

   use of this software implies your agreement with this notice.

Brendan McKay: Australian National University; Brenda...@anu.edu.au

Adolfo Piperno: University of Rome "Sapienza"; pip...@di.uniroma1.it

Gunnar Brinkmann: University of Ghent; Gunnar.B...@UGent.be

---END-OF-FORMAL-COPYRIGHT-NOTICE---

Earlier (pre-2.6) versions of this package carried a different

notice: "Permission is hereby given for use and/or distribution

with the exception of sale for profit or application with nontrivial

military significance." These days most people use nauty via a

larger package such as Magma, Sage, or GAP, and often they don't

even know they are using nauty. Due to the legal nonsense that

large package distributors need to worry about, it has proved too

much trouble to maintain an idiosyncratic licence. I didn't change

my opinion about military use, but it is no longer part of the

formal notice. Brendan McKay (Jan 20, 2016)

 

Jeroen.

[David Joyner]

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 2:29 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, 21 January 2016 07:16:45 UTC, Jeroen Demeyer wrote:
>>
>> On 2016-01-21 00:29, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>> > Surely, if the official nauty got another licence it would have solved
>> > the problem easier.
>>
>> Maybe you could ask McKay if he is willing to license *every* version of
>> nauty (past and future) with a GPL-compatible license? If we are only
>> allowed to ship one specific version of nauty in Sage, we should not
>> make it standard since it won't be maintainable.
>
>
> I have asked, and here is his proposed licence for 2.6:
> (I have asked him to deal with part D better, too)
>
>
> This is the copyright notice for the software package Nauty and
> Traces, versions 2.6 and later.
>
> Four categories of software are included in the package:
> A. All files not listed as B-D below, copyright Brendan McKay (1984-)
> B. Files traces.h and traces.h, copyright Adolfo Piperno (2008-)
> C. File watercluster2.c, copyright Gunnar Brinkmann (2009-)
> D. Files planarity.h and planarity.c, copyright Magma project
> (University of Sydney)
>

Can planarity.h and planarity.c be removed from the Sagemath version of nauty?

[mmarco]

I would vote yes if the concerns presented by François are addresed.

[Dima Pasechnik]

On Friday, 22 January 2016 17:23:06 UTC, David Joyner wrote:

On Fri, Jan 22, 2016 at 2:29 AM, Dima Pasechnik <dim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thursday, 21 January 2016 07:16:45 UTC, Jeroen Demeyer wrote:
>>
>> On 2016-01-21 00:29, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>> > Surely, if the official nauty got another licence it would have solved
>> > the problem easier.
>>
>> Maybe you could ask McKay if he is willing to license *every* version of
>> nauty (past and future) with a GPL-compatible license? If we are only
>> allowed to ship one specific version of nauty in Sage, we should not
>> make it standard since it won't be maintainable.
>
>
> I have asked, and here is his proposed licence for 2.6:
> (I have asked him to deal with part D better, too)
>
>
> This is the copyright notice for the software package Nauty and
> Traces, versions 2.6 and later.
>
> Four categories of software are included in the package:
> A. All files not listed as B-D below, copyright Brendan McKay (1984-)
> B. Files traces.h and traces.h, copyright Adolfo Piperno (2008-)
> C. File watercluster2.c, copyright Gunnar Brinkmann (2009-)
> D. Files planarity.h and planarity.c, copyright Magma project
>    (University of Sydney)
>

Can planarity.h and planarity.c be removed from the Sagemath version of nauty?

At my prompting, Brendan asked Magma group for permission to release.

But if for some reason this won't work we can indeed just remove them.

 

> Regarding files in classes A, B and C:
>    Permission is hereby given for the use, distribution and
>    modification of this software subject to the following.
>    * You must include this copyright notice with all distributed
>      copies of this software, including modified copies.
>    * You must clearly mark modified versions of this software
>      as differing from the original.
>
> Regarding files in class D:
>    Permission should be sought from the Magma project.
>
> Regarding all the files in the package:
>    This software is only provided "as is". No guarantee is made
>    as to the suitability of this software for any purpose. No
>    responsibility will be taken by the authors or their employers
>    for any misfortune which befalls you because of its use. Your
>    use of this software implies your agreement with this notice.
>
> Brendan McKay: Australian National University; Brenda...@anu.edu.au
> Adolfo Piperno: University of Rome "Sapienza"; pip...@di.uniroma1.it
> Gunnar Brinkmann: University of Ghent; 
>