On 9/7/10 12:27 PM, Anders Logg wrote:
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.
I guess the question is how one feels about this, as therein lies the
difference between LGPL and GPL. And since there are many votes for
LGPL---and it will likely win this little vote---I will voice my support
for GPL. As in, if in the future there exists some cool frontend or
something for FEniCS, I would like such a tool (or its underlying
enhancements) to be freely available for teaching students and such.
