dolfin team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 10:21:37AM +0100, Garth N. Wells wrote:
> 
> 
> Dag Lindbo wrote:
> >>>> The GTS interface 
> >>>> is so weird and poorly documented I don't if the problem is in GTS or
> >>>> DOLFIN. I suspect GTS.
> >>> Ok, but why does not the memory test produce gts related complains from the 
> >>> two other linux buildbots?
> >>>
> >> No idea. If you would like to punish yourself, try figuring out how 
> >> construction/destruiction works in GTS! Anders and I discussed briefly 
> >> the possibility of using CGAL in place of GTS in the future.
> >>
> > 
> > GTS has the benefit of having a debian/ubuntu package available. 
> 
> CGAL is also available as a package. A serious issue is that higher the 
> level components of CGAL (which we would want ot use) have a restrictive 
> license (QPL).

Yes, Andre and I have discussed this some. As far as I can see, the
QPL is compatible with LGPL in the sense that you may link them (none
of the two gives any restrictions on the license of the other one).

But QPL is incompatible with GPL, since GPL would force the
QPL-licensed code to be GPL and the QPL license does not allow it to
be converted to GPL (which LGPL does which is why LGPL and GPL are
compatible).

Copyright holders of GPL code may add exceptions saying that it is ok
to link against for example CGAL without needing to make CGAL GPL, so
the only problem would be if we wanted to distribute DOLFIN (which is
LGPL) together with CGAL and some other GPL-licensed code that we
don't have copyright for.

So in summary, my interpretation is that it's ok for us to link
against QPL, but I'd be happy if someone could check the reasoning.

-- 
Anders

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