[Python-ideas] Python 3000 TIOBE -3%

[Robert Kern]

On 2/10/12 8:49 AM, Masklinn wrote:
> On 2012-02-10, at 01:03 , Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 3:52 PM, Sturla Molden<sturla at molden.no>  wrote:
>>> Den 9. feb. 2012 kl. 23:56 skrev Guido van Rossum<guido at python.org>:
>>> ).
>>>
>>>
>>> Hm... is there a reason GSL and SciPy need to compete? Can't SciPy
>>> incorporate GSL?
>>>
>>> GPL vs BSD issue.
>>>
>>
>> That's a bummer. Someone should open negotiations.
>
> I'm not sure what could be open to negotiate, being part of the GNU
> constellation I don't see GSL budging from the GPL, and SciPy is backed
> by industry members and used in "nonfree" products (notably the Enthought
> Python Distribution) so there's little room for it to use the GPL.

While I am an Enthought employee and really do want to keep scipy BSD so I can 
continue to use it in the proprietary software that I write for clients, I must 
also add that the most vociferous BSD advocates in our community are the 
academics. They have to wade through more weird licensing arrangements than I 
do, and the flexibility of the BSD license is quite important to let them get 
their jobs done.

> Best thing that could happen (and I'm not even sure it's allowed by the
> GSL's license (which is under the GPL not the LGPL) would be for SciPy to
> grow some sort of GSL backend to delegate its operations to, when the GSL
> is installed.

We've done that kind of thing in the past for FFTW and other libraries but have 
since removed them for all of the installation and maintenance headaches it causes.

In my mind (and others disagree), having scipy-the-package subsume every 
relevant library is not a worthwhile pursuit. The important thing is that these 
packages are available to the scientific Python community.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
  that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
  an underlying truth."
   -- Umberto Eco