Hi, some FEMhub users are confused by seeing the name "Sage" in warnings and error messages, and in various installation scripts and messages. They are there because FEMhub uses some functionality of Sage (as Ubuntu uses some functionality of Debian). However, the word "Debian" does not appear in Ubuntu (for a normal user). We would like to design a similar model, acknowledge Sage for using their functionality, but limit the occurrence of the word "Sage" for FEMhub users. Here are a few ideas how we would like to do it, please feel free to comment:
The best model to learn from is Debian vs Ubuntu. If you take any Debian source package and recompile it in Ubuntu, most of the time it will just work, any new Ubuntu release starts by upgrading all packages to their Debian versions (+custom Ubuntu modifications) and it is a common practice, when fixing bugs or upgrading packages, to just do it for Debian and it will then be synchronized in Ubuntu as well. Also, you can take Debian and upgrade it to Ubuntu, or vice versa (I did both, so I know it works), so for practical purposes, Debian and Ubuntu is the same thing. However, when you go to ubuntu.com, install Ubuntu and use it, you can't confuse it with Debian, as all brands are just Ubuntu and you can treat it as if Debian didn't exist. If you are a developer, you can learn all about it at [2]. So after discussing this with Pavel, I propose that we do the same thing with FEMhub and Sage, e.g. FEMhub being derived from Sage (like Ubuntu is derived from Debian ---- it's just an analogy, because Sage is a massive project, and in FEMhub we are currently way smaller), we fix all FEMhub to only mention FEMhub and make sure that you can treat it as if Sage didn't exist (this is mostly done, but not 100%). At the same time, maintain full Sage compatibility (this currently works 100%, as far as I know). We should have a section on our pages and/or in the README file explaining the relationship and acknowledging Sage. By doing: $ git grep Sage in the femhub git repository[3], you can see that we need to fix the following files: * COPYING.txt * README.txt * femhub * spkg/base/prereq-0.3-install * spkg/base/sage-env * spkg/base/sage-spkg * spkg/install * spkg/standard/sage_scripts/* # lots of files in there Then we need to change (or check) the following packages: * femhub_notebook (I think it still mentions Sage in there, but maybe it's fixed already) --- this is based on the Sage notebook, and it will stay in FEMhub for the foreseeable future (we will also add codenode and maybe also our own notebook and/or modifications of the Sage notebook or codenode, depending on our manpower). * fortran (I think it might mention Sage in the build scripts) Note about copyright files and licenses --- the Sage build system is GPLed as noted in COPYING.txt and the common practice (in Ubuntu) is to ship the original Debian copyright file (and it mentions Debian) with all packages, so I suggest we just add some FEMhub notes at the beginning of the file. In general, all opensource licenses require (in some form) to copy the license somewhere, then we are free to modify the sources (e.g. change Sage->FEMhub) and since we will not change the license of the code, that should be it. Another thing is copyright, e.g. for example this file: sagenb/notebook/tutorial.py contains: ############################################################################# # Copyright (C) 2006, 2007 William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> # Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) # The full text of the GPL is available at: # http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ ############################################################################# I don't know what we are required to do (as directed by the GPL license), but I suggest we simply leave this as is, and if we choose to do some deeper modifications (as opposed to just changing Sage->FEMhub), we simply add there a line "Copyright (c) 2009 hp-FEM group at UNR" and leave the rest intact. Is this how it works? Or should we do something else here? Otherwise, all should be clear. The goal is to keep all copyright and attribution to whoever it belongs, just change what the normal user would experience when working with FEMhub. Ondrej [1] http://hpfem.org/ [2] http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/debian [3] http://github.com/certik/femhub -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
