Bug#617931: gmsh: multiple licensing issues

[Francesco Poli]

Control: tags 617931 - pending


On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:18:10 +0200 Anton Gladky wrote:

> Hi all!

Hello!

> 
> The upstream authors of GMSH kindly agreed
> to add an license exception for the OCTPL
[...]
> So I think Opencascade issue is solved.

I am afraid that this is not enough, unfortunately...   :-(

This kind move from upstream solves the incompatibility between Gmsh
and OCE/OpenCASCADE, but there are other parts of the issue.
Please see below.

> 
> GMSH links with GSL library (libgsl0ldbl) only on m68k-platform,
> which is not officially supported by Debian. So the issue is not
> relevant.

I think that this part of the issue will be relevant for the m68k
architecture, as long as gmsh is still distributed for that unofficial
architecture.
Something that is *not* legally distributable does *not* magically
become distributable, just because the architecture is not officially
supported by the Debian Project...
This part of the issue may be irrelevant for the release of wheezy, but
not generally irrelevant: I think you should have gmsh removed from the
m68k architecture, in order to make this part of the issue really go
away.

> 
> So, I think the bug is resolved.

There seem to be other GPL-licensed libraries linked with gmsh:
libcholmod1.7.1 (some parts are GPL-licensed)
libumfpack5.4.0 (UMFPACK is GPL-licensed)
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/s/suitesparse/current/copyright
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Linking with these libraries seem to still make the GPL-incompatibility
of OCE/OpenCASCADE very relevant, unfortunately.
If this is really the case, then the possible solutions I can think of
are:

 (A) Open CASCADE S.A.S. should be contacted and persuaded to
re-license Open CASCADE Technology under GPLv2-and-v3-compatible terms.

 (B) Open CASCADE Technology should be substituted with a
GPLv2-and-v3-compatible replacement, if any is available.

 (C) CHOLMOD and UMFPACK copyright holders should be asked to re-license
these libraries under the GNU LGPL.

 (D) CHOLMOD and UMFPACK copyright holders should be asked to add a
license exception that gives permission to link these libraries with
code released under the OCTPL.

> 
> I am going to decrease the severity of the bug

I don't think the severity of the bug has changed in any way.

> and close it by the next upload.

Please, don't close the bug report until the bug is properly fixed...

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