On 21 Sep 2001, Raymond Toy wrote:
> Is that really true? If so, then why did Bill Schelter need to get
> that letter from the DOE? There must have been at least some
> confusion on the true legal status of that code.
I think he really didn't _need_ it, but more it was just a formal
affirmation, that makes one feel safer using the code.
What comes to the DOE export restrictions, to me it looks quite
much like it is GPL incompatible. That is, Maxima really isn't GPL'ed
after all, althought quite close--but unfortunately GPL incompatible,
so you can't incorporate GPL code into Maxima codebase, if you want
to go strictly legal way. To me it doesn't matter tough...
Mr. Fateman said that since GPL makes commercial usage more difficult,
it really isn't a free software. Opinions differ, but I think that
the only way to ensure that the code is as free as possible and
also _keeps_ being free, is the GPL. A BSD licensed software might
be more free at some moment, but after it is commercialized
it probably won't be anymore free. Yes, the original code stays
still free but newer versions won't as they would with GPL.