[Coin-discuss] COIN-OR licences again...

[Brady Hunsaker]

Soeren,

I use Debian desktops at home and Ubuntu laptops (which is 
Debian-based), so I'm sympathetic with the desire to be DFSG-free.  I 
actually didn't know that this issue existed until your email.

I'm also sympathetic with your desire for license compatibility, and I 
prefer to release code that I write under both the CPL and GPL. 
However, I don't think it's likely that the core components of COIN-OR 
will be relicensed.  Contributors to COIN-OR retain their copyrights. 
Many COIN-OR projects, including CLP, have IBM as one copyright holder 
(in many cases IBM is the primary or only copyright holder).  As I 
expect you know, IBM wrote the CPL.  I'm sure that people at IBM thought 
about issues of GPL-compatibility at the time, so I'm pretty sure that 
IBM isn't going to change its mind based on that argument.  As long as 
IBM doesn't change its mind, the license for many COIN-OR projects won't 
change.

As for the Debian issues, I wasn't previously aware that there was any 
doubt about the CPL being DFSG-free.  As Matt pointed out, the CPL is 
OSI-approved and considered a free software license by the FSF.  The 
only discussions I find about the CPL on Debian lists are these:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/12/msg00141.html
in which the only responser indicates that the CPL probably is DFSG-free
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/06/msg00216.html
which suggests that the IBM Public License is probably DFSG-free, and
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-java@lists.debian.org/msg10468.html

I don't know of a good way to search all the debian packages based on 
license, but the following provide evidence that the CPL is DFSG-free:

graphviz: under the CPL and in Debian main
postfix: under the IBM Public License (identical to CPL except name) and 
in Debian main
eclipse: under the Eclipse Public License (almost the same as the CPL) 
and in Debian main

Postfix has been around a long time, so it's probably the best evidence 
that the CPL is DFSG-free, even though the wiki doesn't explicitly say 
so.  Of course, none of that changes the GPL incompatibility, which I 
also find frustrating.

Brady


Soeren Sonnenburg wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I apologize for bringing up this discussion again, but is there any
> chance that the COIN OR projects under is dual licensed under CPL *and*
> the GPL? (The CPL is GPL incompatible and thus COIN-OR with 90% of the
> open source programs, not even *linking* to a CPL based library is OK).
> 
> I am asking as I would love to see the COIN libraries to be more
> widespread, i.e. 
> 
> a) I am interested in packaging some of the coin-or programs for
> debian. For example I already packaged dsdp (as it is GPL). It is not
> clear whether the CPL license is debian free software guidelinces
> conform so I would very much like to see coin-or projects GPL dual
> licensed... Note that debian based distributions have the biggest market
> share among the linux distributions - so coin-or could be pre-installed
> and may actually be used by a larger audience.
> 
> b) I personally am looking for a free linear optimizer (like Clp) or
> even the Open Solver Interface (OSI) to be used in my shogun toolbox
> (www.shogun-toolbox.org) to at some point get rid of a cplex dependency.
> I know I could use glpk or lpsolve but as COIN is widely known in the OR
> community I would prefer seeing its projects to be dual licensed. And
> OSI is a great idea, but what does it help if you are not allowed to use
> it in an open source project due to licensing conflicts?
> 
> Please note that it is in any case not a good idea to use a GPL
> incompatible license (see e.g.
> http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html)
> After all most of the projects are GPL and a further incompatibility
> between open source licenses does not really help...
> Maybe this was one of the reasons why firefox etc are now dual licensed
> under GPL/LGPL/MPL... I understand that IBM started this project and
> some people simply did not like the GPL and *intentionally* choose the
> CPL. The community just suffers from conflicting licenses so I hope we
> can overcome this...
> 
> Soeren
> 
> 
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