Re: Re: Slicot in Debian
> Hi,
>
> I am interested in getting slicot [1] into Debian. Slicot is a Fortran
> library implementing numerical algorithms for computations in systems
> and control theory. It is licensed under the GPL (actually it is
> dual-licensed because the library is also incorporated in some nonfree
> MATLAB toolbox).
>
> Parts of the library are already used in the scilab and octave-control
> packages. The upcoming release of dynare will also use slicot. At least
> 3 packages are therefore going to contain embedded copies of (parts of)
> the library, which is not a good thing.
>
> I therefore volunteer to package it, possibly under the umbrella of the
> Debian Science team.
>
> Note that the slicot website states that the source of the library is no
> longer downloadable (they say they are going to reorganize the
> licensing…), but there is still a working download link [2]. I intend to
> contact them to see if they plan to move away from the GPL in future
> releases. In the worst case, if they go nonfree, this means that it
> could become unmaintained (at least from our point of view).
>
> Do you have any comments/ideas before I start hacking?
>
> Best,
>
> [1]
> http://www.slicot.org
>
> [2]
> http://www.slicot.org/shared/slicot.tar.gz
>
>
> --
> Sébastien Villemot
> Researcher in Economics & Debian Maintainer
>
> http://www.dynare.org/sebastien
>
> Phone: +33-1-40-77-84-04 - GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594
Hi,
I'm the author of the Octave control package and came across this thread coincidentally. I'm a bit worried about the future of my work if Slicot should go nonfree. I propose to join our efforts and create a free fork of Slicot 5.0 if the need should arise. Debian, Octave and Scilab developers already do the same for Arpack [1].
Best regards,
Lukas
[1]
http://forge.scilab.org/index.php/p/arpack-ng/
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