[GRASS5] Re: grass5 digest, Vol 1 #2143 - 10 msgs

[Glynn Clements]

Helena Mitasova wrote:

> >> The issue here is not helping a non-GPL project. It is helping GRASS
> >> and enhancing open source software.
> >>
> >> The place where I've run into problems most recently is working to
> >> develop an interface to make agent based modeling tools available to
> >> GRASS and GIS (in GRASS) available to open source agent based
> >> modeling platforms. A major system, with which we are working is
> >> released under BSD. A very useful interface we'd like to use is
> >> (SWIG) released under MIT.
> >
> > Code which uses the BSD or MIT licences can be combined with LGPL or
> > GPL code so long as the overall work is released under the LGPL or
> > GPL.
> >
> >> Because of the work the ABM folks do and
> >> clients they have, they feel that they cannot make their software
> >> GPL --although it is open-source licensed.
> >
> > What are the terms of their licence?
> >
> > What is it about the GPL which they find unacceptable? If it's the
> > prohibition on creating proprietary derivatives, then I don't see any
> > chance of reaching common ground.
> 
> I am not sure whether this is the case, but if you are a fed. gov employee
> your work should be in public domain and GPL may be too restrictive
> for that. So if the tool you develop includes GPLed tools it will  
> have to be GPL and you may not be allowed to do that.

I'm fairly sure that it isn't the case. If it was, the NSA wouldn't
have been able to develop SELinux.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>