[gmx-developers] License

[Roland Schulz]

Hi,

LGPL is good news!

Just to make sure that I'm not misunderstood. I asked because I think
it is *good* that F at H is allowed that exception and not because I
think it is bad. So it was no criticism at all - just curious why I
was not asked to sign anything (which I would have gladly done).

Roland

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 2:35 AM, Erik Lindahl <lindahl at cbr.su.se> wrote:
> Hi Roland,
>
> In principle you're quite right, but I have some news: We're actually
> preparing a switch to LGPL for exactly this reason, while we still have a
> relatively limited number of developers/contributors to contact and get
> permission from. The tentative plan was to do this post 4.1, but it might
> actually be a good idea to do sooner rather than later. I'll get working on
> it. (Thank god for CVS logs). In principle somebody could protest, but it
> that case we'll have to discuss whether that particular code is so important
> that we will have to reject the LGPL idea, or just remove + rewrite the
> code. It should be very few parts, at least.
>
> For most previous contributors I've at least mentioned these exceptions by
> mail, and made sure they were aware & OK with it - sorry if we forgot you.
>
> For the record, the only special thing with the F at H version is that the
> binary has a digital signature, so we can be sure users don't fake data
> (e.g. by skipping the inner loops :-) to get higher credits in the ranking.
> However, to completely switch to LGPL we're even planning to include this
> functionality for everybody with external signing algorithms - you'll have
> to pick a a key yourself if you want it, though :-)
>
> LGPL will also give everybody the same rights, and then we can avoid a whole
> lot of paperwork by simply letting everybody keep the copyright to code they
> write. In particular US universities tend to get worried when copyright
> forms get involved, while pure open source is fine.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Erik
>
>
>
> The main reason for LGPL is that we think it's "fairer" in the sense that
> everybody
>
> On Apr 18, 2009, at 1:23 AM, Roland Schulz wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> is there a reason (besides historical) that all of Gromacs is under
>> GPL also the parts which can be used as library and could be used more
>> widely if they were under the LGPL? I'm asking because we were talking
>> about the license we should use for the python lib.
>>
>> Also another small license question: I didn't have to sign any
>> copyright forms before contributing as for other projects. Why is
>> that? Couldn't everyone who contributed, object to the special license
>> for F at H and we would have to remove all things from that person to be
>> able to keep giving F at H the special license?
>>
>> Roland
>>
>> --
>> ORNL/UT Center for Molecular Biophysics cmb.ornl.gov
>> 865-241-1537, ORNL PO BOX 2008 MS6309
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>
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-- 
ORNL/UT Center for Molecular Biophysics cmb.ornl.gov
865-241-1537, ORNL PO BOX 2008 MS6309