fenics team mailing list archive

[Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2010 at 08:26:03AM +0530, Harish Narayanan wrote:
> On 9/6/10 7:13 PM, Anders Logg wrote:
> > eA bunch of different licenses are used for various FEniCS components,
> > mostly different versions of GPL and LGPL.
> >
> > I would be practical to clean up among the licenses and maybe even use
> > the same license for all components. At least, we should settle on
> > either GPL or LGPL v3 or any later version for all components. One
> > immediate benefit is that a common license would simplify packaging
> > for Debian/Ubuntu since that requires listing all licenses used and
> > that involves some work (even for DOLFIN alone!).
> >
> > One implication is the need for changing the DOLFIN license which is
> > now LGPL v2.1.
> >
> > An important point to consider is the potential implication of the GPL
> > license used in FFC and UFL, which might force GPL on DOLFIN.
> >
> > I have added a blueprint:
> >
> > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/fenics/+spec/license
> >
> > Please comment here and on the blueprint whiteboard.
>
> Are there any plans for a proprietary product built atop the FEniCS
> components? (Imagine a fancy GUI frontend or something.) Or posed in
> another way, how would the community feel if something like this was
> built on FEniCS, and sold by someone else (or one of their own) for
> profit? (And not have any of their cool extensions contributed back.)

There are no concrete plans that I know of, but I have had many
questions about the choice of license and possibilities for making
proprietary products on top of FEniCS.

GPL tends to be my default choice of license, but there are advantages
to LPGL, one of them being that it can be converted to GPL at will (by
anyone). ;-)

--
Anders