MARIE Alexandre <[email protected]> writes: > I would like to know if the license of Gsas-II is free to use.
Thank you for taking care to keep software free for all. Especially thank you for posting the license text here for discussion. > Here is the license : > ______________________________________________________________________________________ > General Structure Analysis System - II (GSAS-II) > OPEN SOURCE LICENSE > > Copyright 2010, UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National > Laboratory > All rights reserved. > > GSAS-II may be used by anyone on a royalty-free basis. Use and > redistribution, with or without modification, are permitted provided > that the following conditions are met: Explicitly grants license to resitribute in modified and unmodified form. Good. > * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright > notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. This is a restriction that is conventionally considered acceptable. Good. > * Software changes, modifications, or derivative works should be noted > with comments and the author and organization's name. This might be too restrictive; it effectively forbids anonymous contribution and redistribution. > * Distribution of changed, modified or derivative works based on > GSAS-II grants the GSAS-II copyright holder unrestricted permission > to include any, or all, new and changed code in future GSAS-II > releases. This is, IIUC, met by granting every recipient (including GSAS-II) this same license. This seems to be a weaker copyleft (one specific party must receive the same license). I think this is okay, if imbalanced. > * Redistributions that include binary forms must include all relevant > source code and reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of > conditions and the following disclaimers in the documentation and/or > other materials provided with the distribution. This combines two requirements: * A typical requirement to preserve the copyright information and license (good). * A requirement that *every* distribution must come with source code. This may be too burdensome; for example, GPL allows the source to be omitted, requiring only that a recipient who *requests* source must receive it. > * Neither the names of UChicago Argonne, LLC or the Department of > Energy nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or > promote products derived from this software without specific prior > written permission. A typical requirement not to misrepresent the attribution of a modified work. Good. > * The software and the end-user documentation included with the > redistribution, if any, must include the following acknowledgment: > "This product includes software produced by UChicago Argonne, LLC > under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 with the Department of Energy." This is a burden on certain forms of work. This might make the work non-free. There are several problems with the license restrictions. They may make the work effectively non-free. I would recommend the copyright holders express their intent through a more well-known free-software license like GPLv3 or Expat. -- \ “When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until | `\ I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I've tried | _o__) other enemas...” —Emo Philips | Ben Finney
