Bug#618696: closed by Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct at debian.org> (Re: elmer: multiple licensing issues)

[Francesco Poli]

On Wed, 04 May 2011 15:08:02 -0400 Adam C Powell IV wrote:

[...]
> On Wed, 2011-04-13 at 17:27 -0400, Adam C Powell IV wrote:
> > On Wed, 2011-04-13 at 23:00 +0200, Francesco Poli wrote:
> > > On Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:43:37 -0400 Adam C Powell IV wrote:
> > > > Let me see if upstream will work with me on this, as they did a linking
> > > > exception for OpenCASCADE.
> > > 
> > > I think the possible solutions, in descending order of desirability,
> > > are:
> > > 
> > >  (A) SCOTCH copyright holders should be contacted and persuaded to
> > > re-license (or dual-license) it under GPLv2-compatible terms.
> > > 
> > >  (B) SCOTCH should be substituted with a GPLv2-compatible
> > > replacement, if any is available.
> > > 
> > >  (C) GPL-licensed work (Elmer and any other work that indirectly links
> > > with SCOTCH through Elmer) copyright holders should be asked to add
> > > license exceptions that give permission to link their work with code
> > > released under CeCILL-C v1.0 .
> > 
> > I agree with this order.  But B is very unlikely, I have been looking at
> > this type of software, and it has taken several years for François to
> > bring Scotch close to the capabilities of (Par)METIS.  There are not
> > many graph theorists/programmers in the world who can do this, and it
> > takes a very long time.
> > 
> > > Before contacting Elmer upstream (and possibly other GPL-licensed work
> > > upstream), I would try solution (A), or maybe (B).
> > > Adding linking exception should be regarded as a last resort strategy...
> > 
> > Okay, I'll try A, though I've already started on C.  We'll see.
> 
> Upstream came through with C, and it seems the QPL file which I copied
> in is not needed to build Elmer at all.  So this is all resolved.
> Changes are in alioth.

Wow!
This looks like a great improvement (even though persuading SCOTCH
upstream to re-license would have been much better, since I don't think
CeCILL-C meets the DFSG: however this is a bug in the scotch package,
not in the elmerfem one...).

> 
> I'm chasing down an unrelated issue (introduced in upstream SVN since
> after the last Debian upload).  I'll upload when this issue is resolved.

Good, thanks a lot for addressing the issues.
Bye.


-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt
 New GnuPG key, see the transition document!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-science-maintainers/attachments/20110507/13a98caf/attachment.pgp>