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

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 09:58 +0200, Soeren Sonnenburg wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 22:31 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:

> 
> The issue to me is that I and the majority of other opensource projects
> cannot easily build upon CPL based work. The only workaround is that
> projects that would want to use COIN-OR need to go through a license
> change - which we all know is not so easy. 

Of course, this cuts both ways.

> As a result coin-or is not as
> widespread as it could be and its use is limited :( The best example is
> the Open Solver Interface. It is part of COIN-OR and definitely
> something people should use as it nicely interfaces to commercial as
> well as free solvers. 
> 
> I would like to bring COIN-OR to debian, but my motivation to do so is
> that I can use it in my software projects (e.g. shogun) and that it will
> be useful for many other people too (scientific software is still rarely
> used in debian from what I can tell - so extra limitations won't give us
> more users, see e.g. http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=glpk,
> http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=cvxopt or
> http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=lp-solve ).
> 
> > It's true that there are some restrictions we have to live with.  For
> > example, we can't distribute binaries linked with GNU readline or GLPK.
> > The onus is on the recipients of the code to build such binaries if they
> > want those features.
> 
> No-one not just coin-or people can distribute binaries mixing GPL and
> CPL that is the issue.

That's correct.  It doesn't serve much purpose to try to fix blame for
this situation, but there's a symmetry at work here.  If you are a GPL
fan, then the remedy for this state of affairs is for the other parties
to change their licenses.  If you are GPL-averse, the solution is for
GPL authors to make their code easier to link.

> 
> > The discussions on the COIN-OR board related to dual licensing are
> > continuing, but given Alan's comment about clause 3.b, I'm not sure what
> > progress we could make with IBM (who owns the code contributed by
> > members of its staff).
> 
> I don't see the problem in 3.b:
>
> [license verbiage deleted...]

The original motivation for the CPL presumably had to do with
dissatisfaction with GPL v2.  Given that the GPL v3 addresses the patent
protection issue, it may be time to re-visit this question.  If the CPL
"choice of law" clause is a narrow enough issue, it may be that dual
licensing or a compatible CPL would be possible.

No breath-holding, though.  Moving lawyers (esp. at IBM) is not a quick
or easy process.  I can make no promises except to try to revive the
discussion.

> > As for linking with your own code, if you control the license, you could
> > consider an exception to the GPL along the lines of the MySQL one
> > (http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/foss-exception.html), which
> > would allow distributing binaries linking your code to CPL code.  That
> > exception was created so that the GPL version of MySQL libraries could
> > still be linked to PHP.
> 
> Yes true, but if your project has multiple authors/copyright holders
> then this can be again troublesome.

And the same issue applies from our side.

>  
> > > 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...

I don't know of any scientific surveys to back up this conjecture, but I
believe that some of the popularity of the GPL has to do with momentum
(it's the most widely known, for many reasons).  A number of authors
that I've spoken to know--and care--very little about the details of
licenses and the consequences of their use, beyond a vague, general
notion that they want to make their code available and perhaps that they
want to avoid having it "taken private" without their knowledge or
permission.  They pick the GPL because they've heard of it and they want
to spend their time writing code rather than thinking about licenses. 

> > > 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...
> > 
> > The reasons that some people don't want to use or create GPL code
> > involve more or less legitimate concerns on their part.  I can't speak
> > for IBM, for sure, but it's clear to me that they developed the CPL at
> > least in part because they were concerned about patent protection that
> > wasn't part of the GPL v2.  
> 
> I guess the MPL was developed for a similar reason...
> 
> > The most common concern with the GPL is the requirement that the "work
> > as a whole" be licensed under the GPL if any part is, even if that part
> > is only linked through a clean, well-defined interface.  That makes
> > creation of all kinds of interesting combinations of tools impossible to
> > distribute in ready-to-use form, as you are aware.
> 
> Yes. Choice of license  really is about how one wants to see a program
> used/distributed. BSD would potentially achieve the most widespread use
> without necessarily getting contributions back, LGPL/MPL/CPL gets you
> changes contributed back and well GPL ensures that any agglomerate work
> will be open too...

Right.  Achieving a balance between widespread use and the FSF's freedom
agenda is a delicate process.

> 
> The idea of open source is all great but with the license proliferation
> and all the potential conflicts between licenses we loose many benefits
> (there is an attempt to fix this, see
> http://www.opensource.org/proliferation )

License proliferation is an issue for the FOSS community as a whole, but
the community is made up of all kinds of people with different agendas.
It's definitely bad for every project to create its own license with
microscopic differences from other licenses just for vanity.  It's also
bad when people with no legal training try to write licenses without
carefully considering the consequences of their terms and wording.  But
the idea of "one license to rule them all" is just impractical.

> 
> Soeren
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs