Re: SuperLU 5.2.1 licensing
To be sure, we've no problem including the GPL code. It's rebadging it
as BSD code which is the problem.
Drew
On Mon, 2016-05-23 at 14:25 -0700, Xiaoye S. Li wrote:
> The simplest solution is this, whatever is not BSD, you can remove
> the use path, not to include in your release. Removing those do not
> prevent from using SuperLU itself; those add-ons are secondary
> functionalities.
>
> Sherry Li
>
>
> On Mon, May 23, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Drew Parsons <dparsons@debian.org>
> wrote:
> > Dear Dr Li,
> >
> > thank you for maintaining the SuperLU code. We're preparing to
> > update
> > to the latest version in the Debian GNU/Linux project.
> >
> > We noticed some licence changes in v5.2.1 and wanted to draw your
> > attention to some discrepancies which have concerned us.
> >
> > The licence for your own SuperLU code is BSD. But a handful of
> > files
> > in the SuperLU package come from other sources, with their own
> > licences. In v5.2.1 you've prepended the BSD licence, which seems
> > to
> > introduce contradictions with the original authors' licences.
> >
> > I've attached our tally of the various licences.
> >
> > In some cases the licence is compatible. The copyrights of the
> > Xerox
> > Corporation have a simpler licence, and there is a close
> > relationship
> > between them and your lab.
> >
> > In other cases the licence is more or less compatible, e.g.
> > SRC/colamd.*, but the University of Florida's copyright still
> > remains
> > and isn't superseded by Berkeley's BSD.
> >
> > But the University of Minnesota's ITSOL code in EXAMPLE/*fgmr.c has
> > a
> > GPL licence which simply cannot be converted to BSD. In that case
> > the
> > prepended BSD notice is a contradiction.
> >
> > With MATLAB/time.m, you've removed the Mathworks copyright
> > statement
> > but the code is the same. Has Mathworks released the sample code
> > as
> > public domain?
> >
> > Could I ask you to audit the code licences in SuperLU? You've
> > added
> > the MC64 licence notice to License.txt, perhaps the others could be
> > listed there too (removing their prepended BSD notices).
> >
> > Thank you kindly.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Drew Parsons
> > Debian Developer
> >
>
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