[Coin-discuss] Any updates on COIN-OR GPL compatible licensing?

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 2009-04-18 at 07:00 +0200, Soeren Sonnenburg wrote:
> On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 13:34 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 19:08 +0200, Soeren Sonnenburg wrote:
> > > On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 11:26 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > > > Soeren-
> > > > 
> > > > Sorry I haven't been able to respond sooner, but as you've seen from
> > > > Robin's post to coin-discuss, there has been some movement afoot on the
> > > > license front.  Whether that movement represents progress on the
> > > > compatibility/dual-licensing issues isn't yet clear, but there wasn't
> > > > much that we were in a position to do once this process started.
> > > > 
> > > > Now that this part is complete, we will be looking at this and related
> > > > issue again.
> > > 
> > > Unfortunately, it looks like EPL is still a GPL incompatible license. So
> > > it seems it does not help in the case of coinor...
> > 
> > No, but there is a new license steward.  So as far as future
> > developments in this area, we'd now have to raise the question with the
> > Eclipse Foundation rather than with IBM.
> 
> I don't think it is likely that we will see the EPL become GPL
> compatible...

That would depend on how drastic the changes would have to be and how
much value the license stewards see in making it happen.

> 
> > Dual licensing is a different issue, as it involves the owners of the
> > various pieces of code.
> 
> It would be much more easy to dual license coin-or. Having written the
> debian/copyright files there are very few copyright holders apart from
> IBM so it would be easy if you get the "go" from IBM.

That's also a possibility, also under discussion.  Things don't happen
faster on this partly because everyone involved has day jobs and would
rather work on the technology anyway, and partly because nothing happens
quickly where IBM legal is involved.

Developers of other code who want to interface with COIN-OR or other
non-GPL code can make life easier (if it doesn't offend their
principles) by using the LGPL or adding an "open-source exception"
clause to the GPL, along the lines of the one used by MySQL.

> 
> Soeren
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

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