Subject: [fenics-dev] GPL and LGPL

From: "tomtzigt" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2005 16:20:29 -0400

All:

  On the plane trip back home I was thinking about the GPL and LGPL
question. One thought that I think captures the best of both worlds is if
the framework is GPL but it defines pluggable interfaces that could be LGPL
components. The overall framework would still be driven by the nature and
intent of the GPL and GPL-based implementations of these pluggable
interfaces provide a complete GPL based sw stack. However, an organization
that can't deal with the GPL license because they might have some legacy
code, or secret sauce they can't part with, could wrap that asset in an LGPL
pluggable that still would enhance the overall FEniCS project without
forcing everything to be GPL. This addresses the concern that the overall
project remains open and sharable among all, but decouples those
organizations that have valuable assets sufficiently so that they can
contribute either in terms of a valuable integration or as a distributable
bundle without having to part with their asset. 

This decoupling would allow academic clients to work with industry and
leverage FEniCS in their interactions with proprietary sw. As an example, an
academic group could work with Shell using FEniCS, with Shell providing some
secret sauce they don't want to make public. All the work that the academic
group would do would fall on the GPL side so that Shell can't turn around
and claim they own it, while at the same time Shell can still leverage its
internal resources to ease the pain of something new.

Theo

---

From: Anders Logg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 00:31:46 -0500

This is an interesting discussion...

Two initial comments:

(i) The GPL does not force anyone to share their proprietary code, as
long as they don't distribute binaries of GPL code linked with their
proprietary code.

(ii) It would be difficult to force individual developers within
FEniCS to use a particular license (as long as the software is free).
Rob is using the LGPL for FIAT, Matt and Dmitry will use the PETSc
license for Sieve, and I prefer the GPL since I belive it is the
license that best promotes free software.

/Anders

On Sun, Oct 23, 2005 at 04:20:29PM -0400, tomtzigt wrote:
> 
> All:
>  
>   On the plane trip back home I was thinking about the GPL and LGPL question.
> One thought that I think captures the best of both worlds is if the framework
> is GPL but it defines pluggable interfaces that could be LGPL components. The
> overall framework would still be driven by the nature and intent of the GPL and
> GPL-based implementations of these pluggable interfaces provide a complete GPL
> based sw stack. However, an organization that cant deal with the GPL license
> because they might have some legacy code, or secret sauce they cant part with,
> could wrap that asset in an LGPL pluggable that still would enhance the overall
> FEniCS project without forcing everything to be GPL. This addresses the concern
> that the overall project remains open and sharable among all, but decouples
> those organizations that have valuable assets sufficiently so that they can
> This decoupling would allow academic clients to work with industry and leverage
> FEniCS in their interactions with proprietary sw. As an example, an academic
> group could work with Shell using FEniCS, with Shell providing some secret
> sauce they dont want to make public. All the work that the academic group
> would do would fall on the GPL side so that Shell cant turn around and claim
> they own it, while at the same time Shell can still leverage its internal
> resources to ease the pain of something new.
>  
> Theo

> _______________________________________________
> fenics-dev mailing list
> [email-masked]
> http://www.fenics.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fenics-dev

-- 
Anders Logg
Research Assistant Professor
Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
http://www.tti-c.org/logg/