[Debian-med-packaging] Please allow relicensing for older versions of two single files from PHYLIP

[Manolo Gouy]

Hi Joe and Andreas,

Thank you for informing me of this initiative to possibly change the license of PHYLIP.

As far as seaview is concerned, all input/output is done by seaview, so gets() calls
from PHYLIP are absent in seaview’s files dnapars.c and protpars.c, that are DERIVED
from PHYLIP, not exactly PHYLIP’s versions.
The changes consist exclusively in doing all I/O in seaview and doing all parsimony
computations, without any modification whatsoever, using PHYLIP code.
I’ll try to update those files to the last PHYLIP version, but this requires careful work
to locate exactly what data structure can be exchanged between PHYLIP and seaview.

Sincerely,
Manolo Gouy
 __________________________________________________________________________
| Manolo Gouy                                                               
| Laboratoire de biometrie et biologie evolutive - UMR CNRS 5558           
| Universite C. Bernard - Lyon 1  | E-MAIL : manolo.gouy at univ-lyon1.fr  
| 43 Bd du 11 Novembre 1918       | Tel    : +33 4-72-43-12-87             
| 69622 Villeurbanne, France      | Fax    : +33 4-72-43-13-88             |__________________________________________________________________________



> Andreas --
> 
> Thanks, particularly for copying my emails to the
> author of Seaview.  PHYLIP programs are used
> in many other people's products, and I do not
> have time to notify them of issues like this.
> 
> I don't think the UW licensing people will resist a
> change of license.  PHYLIP makes them no
> money anyway and basically they don't care about it.
> 
> As for helping with the move to Gnu/OS, it will take
> awhile (no, probably not in the next 6 months).  You
> could help best by:
> 
> 1. Finding me an Open Source or Gnu license that
> requires that the original programmer get some
> compensation when the program is sold or access
> to it is sold.  I have raised this issue with Gnu/OS
> enthusiasts and claimed that there is none.  Some
> of them look surprised and say "No, Joe, I'm pretty
> sure there is a Gnu license that does that."  I claim
> that this is a mythical beast, and belief in it shows
> that people have mistaken notions about these
> licenses.  But the variety of G/OS licenses is
> very great, and I may well have overlooked the
> relevant one.
> 
> 2. Pointing me to a succinct online manual somewhere,
> not to the mechanics of Guthub / Sourceforge /
> Google Code, but to how to keep a project like
> this from having its code polluted by unwanted
> "features" put in by well-meaning but self-absorbed
> idiots. How to keep it from being steered down
> paths requiring great amounts of future work, by people
> who will get that started, and then disappear forever.
> How to keep some kind of control over "look and
> feel".
> 
> 3. The next time you hear someone say that if
> people would only make their code Free, that
> it would be so widely used that they would make
> lots of money, point out to them PHYLIP, which
> has been "free beer" for 33 years now, and has
> made me no more than $100 in donations.  No,
> that's not $100 per year.  That's total over 33 years.
> 
> As to the great excitement that would accompany
> the announcement that PHYLIP is now Free, keep
> in mind that PHYLIP is not first in the phylogeny
> market, but now about 5th (or maybe 6th), after
> MrBayes, RAxML, Phyml, MEGA, and maybe
> one other, as judged by literature citations.  When
> I tried to get money from the NIH program for
> funding Development and Maintenance of Existing
> Software, they turned me down with the excuse that
> PHYLIP was not State Of The Art (of course, it
> probably gets more use than the programs whose
> development they do fund).
> 
> Anyway, enough from me for now.
> 
> Joe
> ----
> Joe Felsenstein         joe at gs.washington.edu
> Department of Genome Sciences and Department of Biology,
> University of Washington, Box 355065, Seattle, WA 98195-5065 USA