[SciPy-dev] requesting feedback on/editing of scikits wiki-page

[David Cournapeau]

Jarrod Millman wrote:
> On 5/16/07, David Cournapeau <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp> wrote:
>> One thing which may need to be changed is the license requirement. I
>> thought one of the point of scikits was to include code useful for scipy
>> community, but which cannot be licensed to BDS/MIT. For example,
>> including GPL code, or package which depends on LGPL libraries.
>> malabwrap for that matter depends on proprietary libraries to work...
>
> Thanks to Alex for putting together this information.  I don't have
> the time to respond to all his points/questions, but I wanted to
> quickly respond to David's comments about licensing.
>
> Originally, I assumed that *all* the scikit code would be released
> under the same license (ie.,  the revised BSD license like all the
> rest of scipy).  That would certainly be my preference.  My
> understanding was that the basic idea behind scikits was simply to
> provide a modular mechanism for distributing "scipy" packages under
> one namespace.
Ok, my understanding was different on this issue. I thought scikits and 
scipy had different purpose, and that one of scikits' goal was to enable 
code depending on GPL code. I thought scipy modularization was a totally 
different issue.

>
> There are several arguments for using the same license for all the
> packages.  First, I think that it would confusing for users importing
> "from scikits import foo, bar" to find that foo is released under one
> license and bar is released under another.  Second while we want to
> keep dependencies between scikits packages to a minimum, there will
> inevitably be a need for code from one package to be used in another.
> This may lead to code duplication if the needed functionality already
> exists in a scikit's package, but is released under the GPL when BSD
> code is needed.  Third, it is reasonable to imagine that at some
> point, someone will want to refactor the various scikit's packages.
> During a major refactoring, it may be desirable to move code from one
> package to another or even from scikits to scipy.  This will be
> difficult if it is necessary to keep track of what license each piece
> of code is released under.
>
> Basically, I think that opening up the possibility for each package to
> be released under its own license is going to make it difficult to
> maintain some unity to the scipy namespace.  I also don't know whether
> there is a need to include non-BSD code in the scikit's namespace. 
For example, my package pyaudiolab is licensed under the BSD, but 
depends on LGPL libraries. Technically, it is a BSD package, but it is 
unusable without non BSD code. This was given as a reason why pyaudiolab 
could not be included in scipy, but could be included in scikits.

There is also the problem of GPL libraries (qt, pyqt come to mind): I 
don't think you can use them in BSD code, right ? But I guess this 
becomes the grey area of derivative work. Can I use GPL libraries in non 
GPL python if I access the library though ctypes ? If there is a python 
package under the GPL, and I import it in my own package, do I have to 
use the GPL ?

David