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Re: [IMP-dev] IMP and GPL dependencies



Daniel Russel wrote:
> We keep bumping into the useful libraries that are GPL (most recently
> FFTW, which is GPL with commercial licenses available). My proposal is
> that we allow dependencies against such libraries as long as
> - the code which depends on the library is gathered into a self
> contained module which is, itself, GPL
> and
> - IMP as a whole does not require the library to function, only certain
> functionality is missing
> 
> The reason for this suggestion is that
> - the LGPL, under which we plan to license IMP, allows the code under it
> to be relicensed under GPL
> - most people in a research environment will not care if their resulting
> application is GPL or LGPL
> - reimplenenting things ourselves is a pain and best put off until we
> really need to create an application which is not GPL (for example
> linking with Chimera).

Yes, this is a technical solution which would work. However, dynamic
linking to GPL is kind of a gray area, and thus since any IMP module
which does that would probably need to be GPL, no other IMP module would
in turn be able to use that GPL IMP module without in turn becoming GPL.
So a GPL FFTW IMP module would be of limited use, since we wouldn't be
able to use it inside IMP.em for example.

I would prefer to avoid GPL dependencies as much as possible, since they
would need to be handled very carefully. I don't want to ban them
outright at this point - I will have to check with Andrej and our legal
folks first - but for the time being, please avoid them.

	Ben
-- 
                      http://salilab.org/~ben/
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."
	- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle