LIcenses [Re: A Maxima function for solving initial value problems with adaptive step size and error control.]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 1:47 PM, Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu>wrote:

> I disagree.
>
>
> In any case, there is absolutely no requirement that new share packages
> which are not derived from existing code follow GPL.  In fact, legally they
> probably don't even need to be "free software" as long as they are simply
> distributed along with Maxima, and not incorporated into distributed
> binaries.  As the maintainers of Maxima, we can certainly decide that we
> will only publish in share code which has a free or open-source license; we
> can even decide that we require a license which is compatible with GPL.  But
> this includes not just LGPL, but also many others.  Code can also be
> multi-licensed under both GPL *and* other licenses which can be incompatible
> with GPL. Whether the code is compiled or not is irrelevant.
>
> Robert likes GPL and considers it the "standard license" for share files,
> but Robert does not decide for the developer community.  In particular, I
> would object to requiring share code to be licensed under GPL.
>

I agree with you.  For code in share, I would prefer, perhaps, GPL, but I
wouldn't require it.  For things in src, I would say it must be GPL since it
represents the core of Maxima.

Note, however, that the slatec routines are in src/numerical and these
include some special functions and quadpack.   The license for slateci is
definitely not GPL.  Perhaps they should be moved out of src into another
directory?  Slatec might be in the public domain so we could slap GPL over
it, but that seems not nice.

Ray