Rafael,
I can see why our license is ambiguous. When we wrote it in 1994, we
intended it to mean that the program is entirely free, for any purpose
(including commercial) and without any restriction.
If it is easier if we switch to a standard free license, I would choose
the LGPL.
Best regards,
Lieven
Stephen Boyd wrote:
rafael,
i am happy to switch the license to GNU, but of course we have to
check with lieven. as a coincidence i will see lieven tomorrow, when
we can send the final confirmation.
however, it should be noted that semideg_prog is really quite old, and
there are now far more recent solvers available for semidefinite
programming. i have not used semidef_prog for many years now. i
don't know which solver is best for linking to octave.
i (and many others too) do most of my day to day convex optimization
work using cvx, which has a GNU license, but unfortunately, runs on
top of matlab. our plan (hope? goal?) however is to develop a full
GNU system for modeling and solving convex optimization problems.
lieven's CVXOPT is a good start along these lines, but i am not sure
how easy or hard it is to tie python/C into octave. if you are
interested in optimization software for octave, i'd be happy to chat;
maybe we can help (beyond changing the license on ancient, but
working, software to GNU).
stephen
Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
I am one of the members of the Debian Octave Group [1], which
maintains the
Octave-related packages for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution. Your
semidef_prog software, which was ported to Octave by A. S. Hodel, has
been
packaged for Debian [2] since 1998.
Only recently, it has been brought to our attention [3] the fact that
the
license terms in the semidef_prog's README file are incompatible with
the Debian Free Software Guidelines [4]. At least, the phrase
"distribute this
software for any purpose without fee" is ambiguous.
Unless the license terms are clarified or they are switched to some
standard
license language (like MIT/X11 or GPL), we will be forced to removed the
package from Debian, which would be a pity for our users.
Just FYI, the semidef_prog software seem sto work correctly with the
latest
version of Octave (2.9.13).
[1] http://pkg-octave.alioth.debian.org/
[2] http://packages.debian.org/unstable/math/octave-sp
[3] http://bugs.debian.org/435214
[4] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
(Please, respect the Reply-To header, in order to keep the discussion
recorded in our Bug Tracking System. Thanks.)
Best regards,
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