Bug#741196: libpetsc3.4.2: libpetsc.so.3.4.2 links with both GPL-licensed and GPL-incompatible libraries

[Lucas Nussbaum]

On 09/03/14 at 22:26 +0100, Francesco Poli (wintermute) wrote:
> Package: libpetsc3.4.2
> Version: 3.4.2.dfsg1-6
> Severity: serious
> Justification: Policy 2.3
> User: debian-science-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
> Usertags: scotch-license-issues
> 
> Hello,
> the library /usr/lib/libpetsc.so.3.4.2 links with:
> 
>   => libumfpack.so.5.6.2, which is under the GNU GPL v2 or later
> 
>   => libcholmod.so.2.1.2, which has parts under the GNU GPL v2 or later
> 
>   => libptscotch-5.1.so and libptscotcherr-5.1.so, which are released
>      under the GPL-incompatible terms of the CeCILL-C v1.0 license
> 
> This seems to mean that package libpetsc3.4.2 includes a file which
> links with both GPL-licensed and GPL-incompatible libraries.
> 
> Please refer to the almost identical bug #740463 for some further
> details about the SCOTCH licensing issues.
> 
> I think the possible solutions to the issue for petsc are, in
> descending order of desirability:
> 
>  (A) SCOTCH copyright holders should be contacted and persuaded to
> re-license (or dual-license) it under GPLv2-or-later-compatible terms

Hi Francesco,

Have you tried the above?

It seems that the main SCOTCH copyright holders is Francois Pellegrini,
who is very active in the French Free Software community. One of the
colleagues (same Inria research team) of Francois is Brice Goglin, who
is a DD. So it might be useful to try to contact them.

Also, I don't think that the CeCILL license is very popular at Inria
anymore, but I might be wrong.

Lucas