Bug#617931: gmsh: multiple licensing issues

[Anton Gladky]

2012/9/18 Francesco Poli <invernomuto at paranoici.org>:
>
> 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.

I am not agree. It is NOT officially supported by Debian. Why should we care
about that? The version there is 2.3.0, it is very old.

> 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.

It is weird to contact upstream of third-party codes to ask about
relicensing due to some uncertain license-incompatibilities.

Actually libsuitesparse-dev is not even in build-depends of GMSH.
I think your statement is irrelevant. Sorry.

Thanks.

Anton