fenics team mailing list archive

["Garth N. Wells" <gnw20@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 17/02/11 11:08, Harish Narayanan wrote:
> On 2/17/11 11:56 AM, Garth N. Wells wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 17/02/11 10:27, Harish Narayanan wrote:
>>> Dear FEniCS enthusiasts,
>>>
>>> I am going to reiterate a concern that I tried to bring up earlier
>>> regarding the copyright consent forms. Please chime in with your views.
>>>
>>> I understand the rationale behind using LGPL for core FEniCS components
>>> (e.g. DOLFIN and FFC). It makes sense to me that these projects could
>>> form a part of future (potentially proprietary) applications. The
>>> developers of such applications clearly have to bring in a lot of
>>> domain-specific knowledge. I can see why they might want to keep such
>>> knowledge proprietary, and I can see how moving to LGPL brings them into
>>> the community at least as users of FEniCS.
>>>
>>> But the same logic doesn't hold (in my mind) for FEniCS Apps. Some of
>>> these function reasonably well and are already capable of solving select
>>> domain-specific problems. Aren't they, in a sense, closer to complete,
>>> immediately useful applications? Given this, does it make sense that
>>> they too should be released under LGPL? What is then to prevent someone
>>> from, say, slapping a GUI on a well-functioning solver and selling it as
>>> a tool?
>>>
>>
>> I'm not sure what you're advocating. That FEniCS Apps should be GPL?
> 
> Yes, or at least be left to the developer's choice. I am not keen on
> past contributions to FEniCS Apps under GPL now suddenly being
> transferred to LGPL.
> 

I'm perfectly happy with FEniCS Apps developers choosing for themselves
between GPL and LGPL. I thought that this was the present situation?

Garth

> Harish