License of matrix_invert.c and eigen.c in Python Cogent
Hi Ziheng,
I'm contacting you on behalf of the Debian Med team which has the goal
to assemble interesting bio-medical software inside the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution. We just packaged Python Cogent[1] for Debian because this
is highly relevant for our project itself and several other packages
will depend from this.
While most of the code of Python Cogent is licensed under GPL-2 there are
just two files
cogent/maths/matrix_invert.c
ogent/maths/eigen.c (partly)
which are covered by your copyright and are provided under an academia
only license.
According the copyright of the Debian package in June 2010 you was
contacted by Sri Girish Srinivasa Murthy about the license to distribute
these files in the Debian GNU Linux package and you gave permission
under the restricted license.
As a consequence of this the python-cogent package in Debian has to be
considered non-free according the Debian Free Software Guidelines and
every other package depending from it is also not allowed to make it
into the main Debian distribution but only in what we call "contrib".
So your decision about the license of these two files becomes quite
hindering for some of our target packages.
I wonder whether you would consider to dual license these two files.
This would leave the license of your main project PAML untouched but
would be really helpful regarding several of our projects.
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] http://pycogent.sorceforge.net
--
http://fam-tille.de
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