On Apr 27, 1:14 pm, rjf <fate...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
> The note about OpenModelica brought this to mind.
>
> Maxima is licensed under GPL, but it too has additional restrictions.
> You can see the original letter releasing the code to Bill Schelter
> from the DOE, whose people perhaps did not understand GPL
> entirely.
Well, IANAL. Looking at COPYING in Maxima's source distribution it
says:
[quote]
Maxima is dedicated to the memory of William F. Schelter. On 6 October
1998 William F. Schelter was formally notified that he could
distribute
DOE-MACSYMA upon terms of his choosing, in particular the GNU General
Public License: <http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima-doe-
auth.gif>
Schelter proceed to distribute derived works under the GPL.
In the formal notification a request was made that a paragraph "should
be included in the GPL and should accompany other modifications,
enhancements or derivative works of your program." This paragraph is
transcribed below in honor of that request. Like the preamble it does
not form part of the license.
"Distribution of such derivative works is subject to the U.S. Export
Administration Regulations (Title 15 CFR 768-799), which implements
the
Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, and/or the
International
Traffic in Arms Regulations, of 12-6-84, (Title 22 CFR 121-130), which
implements the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2728) and may
require
license for export."
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
[end quote]
The paragraph about the "request" does not seem to agree with the GIF
where it states
"Distribution of such derivative work *is subject* the the US Export
Administration regulation ..."
Such a restriction is incompatible with the GPL IMHO. If you look at
the Maxima website it states
"The Maxima branch of Macsyma was maintained by William Schelter
from 1982 until he passed away in 2001. In 1998 he obtained permission
to release the source code under the GNU General Public License
(GPL)."
where the last part of the sentence links to
http://maxima.sourceforge.net/authorization-letter.html
which seems to be transcribed from the GIF. Given that Debian pays
close attention to the licenses of code can someone with access to a
pure Debian check what repo Maxima is in? It would also be worthwhile
to ping debian-legal about this should Maxima be considered "free".
> http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/wfs/maxima-doe-auth.gif
>
> This letter mentions restrictions, which have always been part of the
> DOE Macsyma license:
>
> "Distribution of such derivative works is subject to the U.S. Export
> Administration Regulations (Title 15 CFR 768-799), .... "
>
> And so Sage [if including Maxima] might require a license for export
> to (say) North Korea, Burma, Cuba, or China.
Yes, the same would apply to Maxima itself.
> I don't know if this is has been overlooked,
> or, as I would certainly prefer, has been resolved satisfactorily and
> is not of concern.
> Classifying Maxima (essentially) as a munition seems
> counterproductive.
Yes, I agree.
> Cheers.
> RJF
Well, Sage does not link to Maxima, so we are not in violation of the
GPL. Maxima itself is freely available to download from sf.net - but
does sf.net honor the export restrictions of the DOD? I know that
Google code does, but I am personally in no position to verify that
for sf.net.
Cheers,
Michael
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel
URLs: http://www.sagemath.org
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
