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

[Soeren Sonnenburg]

On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 23:11 -0400, Brady Hunsaker wrote:
> Soeren,

Hi Brady,

> 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.

It is clear that to be useful IBM would have to dual license the core
of COIN-OR. However as a start projects could switch to dual licenses.
While legally there is no way to release the full project under the GPL
license while using CPL'd code it is still possible to supply only the
addon parts under GPL too. However, to be useful either someone needs to
rewrite the CPL'd parts or IBM dual licenses ... as I don't see why IBM
would not want to see COIN-OR to become the defacto widespread standard
I think there is a lot of hope to see coin-or dual licensed *if* someone
at ibm is willing to go through the trouble of doing the paper-work.

> 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:

I also asked on debian-legal 
http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-legal@lists.debian.org/msg37367.html

the answer is yes though there is no official statement.

> 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

I think this is enough evidence... 

> 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.

Indeed, if I cannot easily use coin-or in my own software projects (> 1
contributor so adding an exception is troublesome too) what would be my
motivation to invest my spare time to get coin-or into debian...

Soeren
-- 
Soeren Sonnenburg - Fraunhofer FIRST      Tel: +49 (30) 6392 1882
Kekulestr. 7, 12489 Berlin, Germany       Fax: +49 (30) 6392 1805
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://list.coin-or.org/pipermail/coin-discuss/attachments/20080407/c64a43c4/attachment.sig>