[Debian-med-packaging] Seeking advice about PSICOV license compatibility with GPL-2

[Laszlo Kajan]

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Thank you very much Francesco!

I would like to implement a free alternative to PSICOV, therefore I have contacted the authors of glasso and asked them to consider changing the
license to GPL-2+ (2 or later), as you recommended.

Best regards,

Laszlo

On 01/11/12 13:09, Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:31:22 +0100 Laszlo Kajan wrote:
> 
> [...]
>> Dear Team members!
> 
> Hello Laszlo,
> I am a debian-legal regular and what follows is my own personal opinion
> on the issue (from the licensing point of view).
> The usual disclaimers apply (IANAL, TINLA, ...).
> 
>>
>> PSICOV [1], a protein contact prediction tool, is built with a patched version of the GPL-2 Fortran source glasso [2]:
>>
>>  gfortran -O3 psicov.c glasso_psicov.f90 -lm -lgsl -lgslcblas -o psicov
> 
> This seems to create an executable binary of PSICOV, statically linked
> with the modified version of glasso, and dynamically linked with the
> GNU Scientific Library.
> 
>>
>> The license of PSICOV does not seem free to me [3], with restrictions on commercial use
> [...]
> 
> The license of PSICOV indeed seems to include a number of definitely
> non-free restrictions and really appears to be GPL-v2-incompatible and
> GPL-v3-incompatible.
> 
> At the same time, glasso seems to be released under the terms of the
> GNU GPL v2 (only v2, I would say, since I didn't spot any "or later
> version" permission in the somewhat unclear glasso_1.7.tar.gz source
> archive).
> 
> The GNU GSL is released under the terms of the GNU GPL v3 or later
> (http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/g/gsl/current/copyright).
> 
> This makes for a very odd mutually-incompatible license mix:
> the GNU GPL v3 is incompatible with the GNU GPL v2, and the PSICOV
> license is incompatible with both.
> 
>>
>> If I understand GPL well, this simply is not allowed: PSICOV is not allowed to restrict what is granted by glasso's license (and that does not
>> limit any of the above). The question is:
>>
>> * Do I see it correctly that PSICOV's license violates the GPL-2 terms of glasso?
> 
> I think that the PSICOV binary (built as described above) is legally
> undistributable: its distribution appears to violate the copyright of
> glasso and of the GNU Scientific Library.
> 
> 
> The possible solutions I can think of are (in order of descending
> desirability):
> 
>  (A) contact the PSICOV copyright holder(s) and persuade them to
> re-license PSICOV under GPL-compatible terms (for instance under the
> terms of the GNU GPL v2 or later); at the same time contact the GNU
> Scientific Library copyright holder(s) and persuade them to re-license
> GSL under the terms of the GNU GPL *v2* or later (rather than GPL v3 or
> later)
> 
>  (B) contact the PSICOV copyright holder(s) and persuade them to
> re-license PSICOV under GPL-compatible terms (for instance under the
> terms of the GNU GPL v2 or later); at the same time contact the glasso
> copyright holder(s) and persuade them to re-license glasso under the
> terms of the GNU GPL v2 *or later* (rather than GPL v2 only)
> 
>  (C) refrain completely from distributing PSICOV
> 
> 
> Please note that solution (A) is unlikely, since the GNU Scientific
> Library, as part of the GNU Project, is supposed to promote the GNU GPL
> v3 (due to the FSF propaganda).
> Maybe solution (B) has more chances to be achievable...
> 
> 
> I hope that my own personal take on this matter helps a bit.
> 
> Bye and good luck.
> 
> 
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