On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:41 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:30 PM, Brian Granger <ellisonbg....@gmail.com> > wrote: >> Now that I think about it, how would I release a worksheet under the >> GPL. The usual way is to add: >> >> This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify >> it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by >> the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or >> (at your option) any later version....etc. >> >> to the source. Is there a simple way of doing that? Would it make >> sense to enable notebook users to add this to their Worksheet by >> simply clicking a box "Make this GPL." Then, when a Worksheet is >> loaded, if it has the GPL text, the notebook could display it or >> notify the user "This Worksheet is GPLd." > > Irregardless of all the licensing discussion above about derived > works, etc, it would be nice to provide a simple way for users to GPL > a worksheet, along with a link to the GPL, GPL faq, etc.
Hopefully it can be made somehow so that it doesn't obstruct so much space. I hate when there is a short few lines script and a page of copyright/license stuff. That said, I of course respect copyright and everything --- I just wish there was some simpler way of specifying all that. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:45 PM, mabshoff <mabsh...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > > > On May 5, 11:34 pm, Brian Granger <ellisonbg....@gmail.com> wrote: >> * If a particular Worksheet uses a GPL library, and that Worksheet is >> distributed to the public (not just Shared internally on a single Sage >> notebook server), it must be GPL. > > I think this is far from clear, but the FSF's interpretation of the > license. The OSI thinks differently for example as pointed out > earlier. I think important is what Sage developer think/intend, isn't it? And I think William has made this clear. > >> * Currently, there is not a clear way of indicating or learning about >> the license of a Worksheet. > > That might be so, but why would it matter? If you write code and link > against a GPLed library there is no mechanism to remind someone that > they have to abide by the GPL. But I agree that it is far from obvious > to a user of Sage that the GPL of worksheets is even an issue and > might apply to published Sage code. It would be nice to add something > to the manual that gives various POVs of the problem, but in the end > it should conclude that anyone concerned about this should consult a > lawyer since the Sage project is not in the position to give legal > advice. > >> * The GPL is confusing as hell... > > The main issue here is that there is the letter of the law and the > intend of the GPL. And there is way too much of a grey zone (even if > you limit yourself to US case law) to make me comfortable. And I would > like to emphasize again that just one should just not take the FSF by > their word since they are clearly not a neutral player here. Well, no one is a neutral player, right? :) But honestly, I am always astonished by a thread like this and the the wide range of opinions of what the (L)GPL actually allow you to or not. On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:53 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote: > > We should be honest to our users about some of the potential pitfalls > and responsibilities associated with using Sage. When users (or > developers) build their work on Sage, they are building their work on > GPL'd code, and there are certainly ramifications involved in doing > this. For example, they can't just take any of their Sage programs > and close source and sell them, etc. It doesn't do any good in the > long run to pretend there aren't such ramifications. The situation > with Sage is really different than the situation with GIMP or > OpenOffice or Emacs, and we should be upfront about that. That'd be cool. I'll help with this text, as I will use it for SPD[0] too. Ondrej P.S., let me know, if we should move this to the newly created sage-flame list. :) P.P.S. But anyway, when my school finishes, I think I'll write a blog about this thread, it was very interesting. [0] http://code.google.com/p/spdproject/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
