[sage-devel] Re: Maxima license "GPL v.3 or later"?

On Sun, Jun 1, 2008 at 11:11 AM, Robert Dodier <robert.dodier at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> William Stein wrote:
>
>> In fact looking through the actual source code, it mostly says
>> "Copyright William F. Schelter" or "See the GNU General Public
>> License for more details.  You should have received a copy of
>> the GNU General Public License."  The top level of the maxima
>> distribution contains the standard GPLv2 license file, which
>> is "GPLv2+", since it contains the phrase "If the Program does
>> not specify a version number of this License, you may choose
>> any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation."
>
> On considering this, I believe you are correct. Although the license
> Schelter included in his distribution was GPL v2, Schelter never
> specified the revision number to the best of my knowledge.
> Therefore (according to the license itself) licensees can choose
> any version (not just v2+).
>
> I don't think that allows present-day contributors to change
> the license to v2+ or v3+ (i.e. to exclude certain versions).
>
> But since v3 is among "any version ever published" it seems like
> the use of Maxima in Sage is OK. Yes/no/maybe ?

I think the use of Maxima in Sage is definitely OK.

  1. As mentioned above I believe it is v2+, and you've confirmed that.

  2. Even if it weren't, currently Sage doesn't do any binary linking with
      Maxima, so technically isn't a derived work.   Sage uses Maxima more
      like emacs or texmacs "uses" maxima via console mode.

 -- William