Re: Proposal for e-mail to SC list about licensing questions for libquad.

[Toon Moene <toon at moene dot org>]

Tobias Schlüter wrote:

> On 2010-09-06 19:13, Toon Moene wrote:

> > The problem I currently have is that it is hard to *prove* that fdlibm
> > and gdtoa are distributed under the BSD license (and exactly which one)
> > - I cannot find a document that contains the exact license text.
>
> from a random fdlibm file:
> /*
>  * ====================================================
>  * Copyright (C) 2004 by Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
>  *
>  * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
>  * software is freely granted, provided that this notice
>  * is preserved.
>  * ====================================================
>  */

Thanks - I was looking for a LICENSE file outside of the source code 
(obviously a bias of working with FSF code only).

> Is that not sufficient?  Likewise you can find the two-clause BSD 
> licence of gdtoa in the source files you linked to.  As for Cephes, 
> that's not owned by the FSF, but it's used in glibc IIUC.  I've not dug 
> deeper, but given that it's on netlib, you will find the licence in the 
> source code.

Yes, I think this is sufficient.

> I think the real problem, as far as the FSF is concerned, is: what 
> licence shall we put the parts of the library that we (i.e. FX) wrote 
> ourselves?  GPL + exception, probably, as the FSF always wants the 
> strongest licence that fits the purpose.  But this infers the question: 
> if Cephes was modified in glibc, can we import the changes and relicence 
> under GPL + e?

Yes, that is why I am asking.  I do agree that I would be much (to not 
use a stronger word) surprised if the FSF wouldn't agree to license FX's 
work (which *is* a derived work of this code) under GPL+exception.

What we try to prevent is for everything to be in trunk - and people 
using it - and then suddenly, a lawyer at the FSF decides that we cannot 
do this (and we have to pull it out shortly before the release of 4.6).

Cheers,

--
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon@moene.org - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.org/~toon/; weather: http://moene.org/~hirlam/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GFortran#news