[kepler-users] GPL vs. BSD (Was Re: saving workflow in eps format)

[Peter Reutemann]

Hi Christopher

> The GPL vs BSD issue certainly can be contentious.

I totally agree. :-)

> Ptolemy is released under the BSD license.

I'm aware of this.

[...]

> That said, Kepler is free to ship under any license that is ok'd by
> the leadership team.  And module developers can ship under any license
> that they would like, though if a module is created with a GPL or AGPL
> license, then that module could not be included in Kepler if Kepler
> is shipped with a BSD license.
>
> We've spent quite a bit of time discussing BSD vs GPL over the years.
> Some of the conversation might be in the kepler-dev archives.
>
> Edward and I are discussing various ways that we could include
> GPL'd code.  One idea is to have a non-GPL version and then
> a GPL version.  This would result in more work at release time.
>
> Currently, I'm quite committed to keeping the core of Ptolemy (the execution
> engine) free of GPL'd code.  This could change in the future.

Just a thought: instead of having the BSD preamble in each file,
wouldn't it be easier to just provide a pointer to the license file?
That would make releasing under several licenses easier.

Maybe, you could even (ab-)use Subversion's properties mechanism to
indicate whether certain source code is GPL-dependent or not, using
this in the release process.

Cheers, Peter
-- 
Peter Reutemann, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Waikato, NZ
http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/           Ph. +64 (7) 858-5174