Reconsidering the GPL licensing of Maxima

Bill's additions and corrections until (I think) 1990
need not be restricted by GPL because they were given to DOE
in DOE-MACSYMA and DOE has the rights to distribute. We see
DOE is perfectly happy to release them
under a more liberal license.

 The Maxima source currently on sourceforge
is "under GPL" because it says so in the file that was
added in October, 1998 or so.
 
We (all, I think) under the impression that there is likely
an identical bit-for-bit copy of many of the
files in that source directory that can be obtained from DOE
that is free of those restrictions.

To say that such a file is under GPL is a rather
esoteric concept. Unless we have developed a new technology of
invisible watermarks, there is no way to truly tell where
an ascii file came from. So if I tell you that you do
not have permission to distribute, say  src/solve.lisp
except under GPL, because it appears in sourceforge,
I would be wrong. You can distribute it, if you can
show there is a way you got that same file from
the DOE.  Or maybe from a tar file posted by Bill
prior to 1998. (debatable).

(Importantly, we are not in disagreement on the
principle that we should try to keep Bill's code viable
and available, perhaps assuring this via current owners
of his copyright.)
RJF


Jay Belanger wrote:

>Richard Fateman  writes:
>...
>  
>
>>    The permission is already there.  The issue is changing the
>>    permission. 
>>
>>In my view...
>>Not really so clear.
>>    
>>
>
>There is a copy of the license in the latest version that Bill
>Schelter released giving permissions.  I don't know what could be
>clearer. 
>Changing the license, which seems to be the current focus, is another
>matter entirely.
>
>Jay
>