Open source license change for CVXPY

[Steven Diamond]

Dear CVXPY contributors,

CVXPY is almost three and a half years old now! Over that time it's been incredible to see the community of users and contributors grow. I want to thank everyone who helped out with the project, whether by contributing code, writing examples, finding bugs, responding to issues, etc. 

I've recently been rethinking a lot of the design choices in CVXPY as part of the version 1.0 rewrite. I have a much better understanding now of how people use CVXPY and what changes are needed to keep building on the success of the package. In particular, I've had a change of heart about my original decision to license CVXPY under GPLv3, rather than under a more permissive open source license. I want CVXPY to be used by as many people as possible, and I want it to be easy to incorporate CVXPY into other packages. The restrictions imposed by the GPLv3 license go against both of these goals. For this reason I've decided to change CVXPY to an Apache 2.0 license.

I need your help to make the licensing change. I'm going to send out a contributor license agreement (CLA) to everyone who made substantial code contributions. I've also attached the CLA to this post. Agreeing to the CLA gives me permission to relicense your code contribution as Apache 2.0. I need a signed and scanned copy of the CLA sent to cvxpy....@gmail.com. I really appreciate your help with the relicensing, and I look forward to working with you all on CVXPY in the future!

Thanks,

Steven Diamond