[GiNaC-list] Re: sympy is NOT a derived work

[Ondrej Certik]

> GPL forbids one to take away the freedom. Some people happen to dislike that,
> but I like this "restriction" *very* much.

I used to think the same. But I changed my mind, especially with the
GPL2 vs 3 incompatibility.
GPL is probably better for endusers of a program, but as to freedom
for developers,
BSD (I am talking about the modified BSD) is imho more free, because you can
use BSD code in ginac or in any other opensource (and even closed-source) code.
There are codes that are GPL 2 only and there are codes that are GPL 3 only
and you cannot mix them. You can however mix a BSD code in both of them.

Ginac solves this issue by being GPL 2, or at your option, any later version.
But that's something that I don't like at all - putting the software under the
license, that the user can optionally choose (from any license that FSF,
produces, even if I didn't agree with some new license of FSF).

I like clear terms. Like GPL 2. Or GPL 3. or BSD.

It's a serious problem, for project like Sage (sagemath.org), that combines
a lot of opensource codes, some GPL2, some GPL3, and Sage cannot
legally combine them,
so FSF basically
works against Sage, instead of for Sage. And that's bad. Read this:

http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/3ab61a6dbaa2f0bf/

> > On the other hand, I also don't like, that Mathematica, a non-free program,
> > is using GMP, while giving nothing back.
>
> So release your code under a (more) restrictive license. :)
>
> > > >we decided to use BSD, because it's more free
> > >                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > Could you please refrain from claims like this? Pretty *please*.
> >
> > Sorry about that, I should have written:
> >
> > we decided to use BSD, because we arrived at a consenus,
> > that BSD is more free (but other people may think otherwise).
> >
> > Is that ok? :)
>
> Almost, although "we decied to use BSD" would be even better, as it's more
> informative and does not provoke yet another "BSD versus GPL" flamewar :)

I know that you are afraid of having a flamewar, and thus you try not to touch
this issue. :) But I am not afraid - flamewar happens if one cannot
discuss. But we
are just stating each other's opinions, and that's not a flamewar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_war

I think things and especially things like this should be discussed. Rationally.

Ondrej