Reconsidering the GPL licensing of Maxima

Richard Fateman  writes:
...
>>>In particular, while he asked DOE for permission to release
>>>THEIR code (actually MIT's, his, mine, ...) under GPL, he
>>>didn't say that his additional code was also restricted by GPL.
...
> (Jay...)
>> It seems to me that he did.
>> The only indication of copyright in the old sources is the GPL, and
>> the included spec file indicates it's GPLed.
>
> I don't know what sources you checked,

I checked the maxima-5.6 sources, which I thought were the latest
sources released by Bill Schelter.

> I looked at the old source for Maxima-5.2a-beta which is in the
> file
> http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/pub/maxima/maxima-5.2a-beta.tgz
> This version is significant because it is dated 16-September-1998.
>
> That is, it is the last version just before Bill got a letter (3 weeks
> later) from the DOE, on 6-October-1998.  In that version 5.2a-beta,
> there is no mention of GPL.

I would think that sources released after he got the letter would be
relevant, not sources from before he got the letter.

> If Bill had meant for his own code to be "protected" by GPL, he
> wrote all that code from about 1984 to 1998 and never mentioned
> it.

But he included a copy of the GPL with the code after he got
permission.

>> Since the GPL provides much fewer restrictions than some of the other
>> stuff he wrote himself, I don't see why this point would be argued.
>
> Actually, I don't see GPL to be consistent with Bill's intentions, 

I'm going by his actions.  It does seem somewhat disrespectful to
assume that he didn't know what he was doing.

> As I said, I think he believed he was being respectful to the DOE.

And he did what he did, which was use the GPL.

> Several people have suggested that Bill's heirs inherited his
> copyright, and could say what they would like to do with material
> specifically authored and copyrighted by Bill.
>
> I've started making an inquiry along these lines.

Which is, of course, a different issue that what the license currently
is.

Jay