dolfin team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 06:22:39PM +0200, Garth N. Wells wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 10:17 -0600, Robert C. Kirby wrote:
> > >
> > > I downloaded boost, pulled the header files out and dropped them  
> > > into my
> > > directory and it worked fine, so it appears that no binary  
> > > libraries are
> > > involved. I did a grep on the header files, and the dependency on  
> > > other
> > > boost components is limited.
> > >
> > 
> > Is there any license issue to just stuffing the requisite .h files  
> > into DOLFIN?
> > 
> 
> No. The Boost license is more liberal the GPL. You can find it here
> http://www.boost.org/LICENSE_1_0.txt.
> 
> Garth

I'm not sure. If you look in the GPL FAQ which is available at
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html you find the following answer
to the question "What is the difference between "mere aggregation" and "combining two
modules into one program?":

    Mere aggregation of two programs means putting them side by side
    on the same CD-ROM or hard disk. We use this term in the case
    where they are separate programs, not parts of a single
    program. In this case, if one of the programs is covered by the
    GPL, it has no effect on the other program.

--> Combining two modules means connecting them together so that they
--> form a single larger program. If either part is covered by the
--> GPL, the whole combination must also be released under the GPL--if
--> you can't, or won't, do that, you may not combine them.

    What constitutes combining two parts into one program? This is a
    legal question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe
    that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of
    communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared
    address space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what
    kinds of information are interchanged).

    If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are
    definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run
    linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely
    means combining them into one program.

    By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are
    communication mechanisms normally used between two separate
    programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules
    normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the
    communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal
    data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two
    parts as combined into a larger program. 

You could interpret this as if we distribute ublas as part of DOLFIN,
then ublas must be licensed under the GPL, which we can't do?

On the other hand, the boost license is listed as compatible with the
GPL so I guess it should be ok:

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html

/Anders