What you write is certainly true, and I can't argue with it on general grounds.
In this case, however, I don't think GMP will be hurt by a fork. I think eventually one of two things will happen. Either the two projects will diverge significantly (this is quite possible, as we will be unable to use their LGPL v3+ code in our GPLv2+ fork) and both projects take on different flavours, or the two projects will end up being competitive on features, release schedules, quality, etc, etc. History also shows that most forks of open source projects end up remerging at some point, so hopefully the end result is a win, win for the computational and mathematical communities. I rather suspect we'll just end up being competitive, and the overall standard of both projects will be improved as a result. At the present rate of development, there isn't much to fork anyway. The mpir project also has the aim of being GMP compatible for as far as it can be. It was in the hope of perhaps continuing to retain that compatibility, that I even replied to Torbjorn about the licenses. Unfortunately, I was under the misapprehension that Torbjorn's business was largely funded by his work on GMP and that he received substantial income from companies which our project will be of no interest to (because of the GPL). Had that been the case, it is possible that Torbjorn would have seen our project as complementary, rather than competitive with his own. Just as he wouldn't be interested in catering his product to Microsoft, Apple or Sun, so we wouldn't be interested in serving the interests of the big MA*'s. How badly did I miscalculate that one! Bill. On 30 May, 14:43, Daniel Bump <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I have read v2 and I started to read version 3 some time ago. Once I > > got to all the bits that had been tacked on to a perfectly good > > license, i.e. stuff about patent agression, tivoisation, cryptographic > > keys, I stopped reading. > > It's good to remember why GPLv3 has provisions against > patent aggression. Here are a couple of articles written > about a year ago. > > The first, from Fortune Magazine (a pro-corporate source), > deals with the Microsoft-Novell agreement, Microsoft's > claim that the Linux kernel violated 235 software patterns. > > The second, from Groklaw, contains an analysis of the > patent provisions that were added to draft 3 of GPLv3. > (This was not the final draft of GPLv3 but the article > remains relevant.) > > http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/05/28/100...http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20070328231130436 > > GPLv3 seeks to limit the conveyer's ability to use > software patents to sue or intimidate users. This is the > reason Microsoft doesn't like it. Microsoft has > already threatened the Linux kernel by making claims of > patent infringement. This (recent) history shows why > Microsoft must be treated cautiously, and this is the > subtext of Section 11 of GPLv3. > > > > It is certainly in Microsoft's monopolistic interest to sabotage Free > > > Software projects, and to cause forks to be created. A Judas kiss > > > from Microsoft. > > > I don't see how a fork will sabotage GMP. Forking is one of the > > essential freedoms that GPL allows. > > > When you see Microsoft allowing people to fork their operating system, > > that will be the day. > > The point of free software is to grant freedom to modify, > which in the limit means the freedom to fork. But if your > project is forked your development base and your user base > are diminished. Forks are thus harmful to a project. > This is a situation where having a freedom is a right, but > exercising that freedom can cause harm. > > I understand that the decision to fork GMP has been > taken and isn't likely to be reversed. But I think it's > important to be aware of the broad picture. > > > This is one straightforward reason why GPLv3+ only code > > is a problem for the Sage project. It has nothing to do with > > ideological stubborness by Sage developers (instead it is > > ideological stubborness by Stallman). > > RMS has been known to be pragmatic about licensing. The parsers > produced by Bison are not GPL'd. And GNU Go (which is > mostly GPLv3) contains two files that are published under the X11 > license (similar to BSD) to promote the acceptance of the > Go Text Protocol by allowing these files implementing the > protocol in other programs. RMS was personally involved in both > licensing decisions. Both were taken for pragmatic > reasons: a judgement that this licensing decision best > advanced the cause of free software. > > One thing to bear in mind is that it is RMS that makes > the ultimate decision about licensing. I don't suppose > he'd agree to license GMP under v2 but if there was > some compromise that would help here you should talk > to him directly (or Eben Moglen). > > Daniel Bump --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
