On Jun 1, 5:30 pm, Robert Dodier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
>
> Jaap Spies wrote:
> > See at the end of:
>
> >http://www.math.utexas.edu/pipermail/maxima/2008/011842.html
>
Hi Robert,
> I don't know what is at stake here from the perspective of Sage,
> but so far as I know the current developers of Maxima are not
> in a position to change the license by their own agreement.
>
> The code base from which the current developers are working
> was released by Bill Schelter under terms of the GNU GPL v2.
> (To the best of my knowledge, Schelter never referred to later
> versions of the license.)
On a general note: If the license on even one file of Maxima source
code is currently GPL V2 [only] you cannot relicense the whole work
under GPL V3 or later since GPL V2 and GPL V3+ are incompatible. If
Bill Schelter did use GPL V2 only this will likely apply to a large
portion of the Maxima code base.
Another problem is that since Maxima is written in common lisp and
therefore can be run in interpreted mode, i.e. there is no compilation
or linking involved in that case. Interestingly enough there is a
provision in the clPython license [which is licensed under LLGPL - see
"License Terms" at http://opensource.franz.com/ ], so somebody at
Franz looked at the LGPL and came to the conclusion that for a
[potentially] interpreted language there is a problem with the concept
of derived work here.
The same applies to code written in Sage on the Python level since
there is also no compilation and hence no linking going on.
> Unfortunately Schelter died in 2001.
> To change the license to anything else, it seems necessary to
> get approval from Schelter's heirs.
Yes, since he died this is certainly a problem. IANAL, so I don't know
if his estate could make those license changes, but it sounds
plausible that they could. Note that maybe the DoE [or was it the DoD]
as the original copyright holder of the Maxima source code may have
imposed that Maxima would be GPL V2 only, but that is pure speculation
from my end.
> If someone wants to contact
> them, I certainly can't stop them, but I'm not interested in doing
> it myself. In the absence of such approval, I don't see how any
> relicensing can go forward. If someone wants to pomote a legal
> theory under which relicensing is possible, I'd like to hear about it.
> But from what I can tell, a decision amongst the current
> developers isn't enough.
I agree with you 100% here.
> FWIW
>
> Robert Dodier
Cheers,
Michael
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