license (again)

[B Saunders]

The documentation page linbox.html/copy.html starts like this:
-------------------------

Copyright and Licencing

The copyright and licensing (GNU LGPL) info of LinBox is in COPYING
-------------------------

It then continues with a copy of the GPL (not LGPL).  Also COPYING actually contains the GPL (not LGPL).

Something should change to resolve this inconsistency.  So, are we stridently free software or permissive free software?  I vote for permissive.




[Brice Boyer]

www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.en.html

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Brice Boyer               http://www-polsys.lip6.fr/~boyer/

[B Saunders]

Yes, that is the argument for strident, an admirable position.  But to the extent possible and that it arises, I would like to see any user of LinBox algorithms use us directly rather than reinvent us and this includes Maple, Mathematica, Matlab.  I love Sage, but am not a monogamist when it comes to CA systems.

[Gavin Harrison]

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

"Using the ordinary GPL is not advantageous for every library. There are reasons that can make it better to use the Lesser GPL in certain cases. The most common case is when a free library's features are readily available for proprietary software through other alternative libraries. In that case, the library cannot give free software any particular advantage, so it is better to use the Lesser GPL for that library.

This is why we used the Lesser GPL for the GNU C library. After all, there are plenty of other C libraries; using the GPL for ours would have driven proprietary software developers to use another—no problem for them, only for us."

I'd say that case fits linbox well.  It would be beneficial if a proprietary CAS used, and contributed back to, linbox.

[Brice Boyer]

That was the idea... And for lgpl you need gpl licence file... The issue was not lgpl but gpl 3

[B Saunders]

OK, so the only thing that was confusing was the doc file copy.html which mentioned the LGPL but included the GPL.  I've made that clearer, which ends this thread, I believe.