[Numpy-discussion] Licensing question

[David Cournapeau]

On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 12:55 AM, Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 6, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Those are not the original Fortran sources. The original Fortran sources are
>> in the public domain as work done by a US federal employee.
>>
>> http://www.netlib.org/fftpack/
>>
>> Never trust the license of any code on John Burkardt's site. Track it down
>> to the original sources.
>
> Taken together, what those websites seem to be claiming is that you
> have a choice of buggy BSD code or fixed GPL code? I assume someone
> has already taken the appropriate measures for numpy, but it seems
> like an unfortunate situation...

If the code on John Burkardt website is based on the netlib codebase,
he is not entitled to make it GPL unless he is the sole copyright
holder of the original code.

I think the 'real' solution is to have a separate package linking to
FFTW for people with 'advanced' needs for FFT. None of the other
library I have looked at so far are usable, fast and precise enough
when you go far from the simple case of double precision and 'well
factored' size.

regards,

David