License of Generated Code Clarity

[joshua...@gmail.com]

In the license file of the casadi repo, there are no statements discussing/distinguishing the generated code vs casadi source code. 
https://github.com/casadi/casadi/blob/master/LICENSE.txt

Would it be possible to include something here to make it clear that generated code is license free? Right now besides a forum post, the only justifcation I see is this at the top of generated files

/* This file was automatically generated by CasADi.

   The CasADi copyright holders make no ownership claim of its contents. */

But I'm not sure this is a strong enough statement.

[joshua...@gmail.com]

Just wanted to check in on this topic to see if it possible to update the License.txt file to explicity state that the generated code from Casadi does not have the same restrictions as the library itself (LGPL3).

[Joel Andersson]

I think that the only thing that is a bit ambiguous is the licensing of the "C runtime" located at https://github.com/casadi/casadi/tree/master/casadi/core/runtime. These functions are written in a special way to allow them both be called directly from the rest of the C++ code in CasADi, but they are also automatically turned into template strings by the build systems and then inserted into the generated code after some substitutions. Those are the only thing in the generated code that could be considered "original work" and they are currently licensed under LGPL3, like the rest of CasADi. So I guess what we could do is to:

1. Add a LICENSE.txt file in https://github.com/casadi/casadi/tree/master/casadi/core/runtime, with a more permissive license than LGPL3. Maybe MIT license?

2. Change the autogenerated header in generated code to something like:

/* This file was automatically generated by CasADi.

  The CasADi copyright holders make no ownership claim of autogenerated content.

  Any templated code inserted in this file retains its original license (MIT License, cf. "casadi/core/runtime/LICENSE.txt" in the CasADi codebase).

 */

Would that make sense?

Joel

[Joel Andersson]

Joris and I decided to go for an approach like this, cf. https://github.com/casadi/casadi/issues/3015.

It will be included in the upcoming release (3.6). For any further discussion, please comment on that Github issue.

To be clear, this is not a restriction of the current licensing. It's just clarifying that we don't expect the template code used in generated code is no longer LGPL.

Best regards,

Joel

[Joel Andersson]

Note that the license was clarified in 3.6.0. For further discussion, please use the new forum in Github Discussion.

Joel