[SciPy-dev] Official scikits licensing

[Robert Kern]

Alexander Schmolck wrote:
> Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> This is the official word on scikits licensing: 
> 
> OK, I think this bit should just go verbatim on the scikits wiki:
> 
>> scikits packages are free to choose their own open source license. The
>> license should be officially OSI approved. We will allow packages to contain
>> code with licenses that, in our judgment, comply with the Open Source
>> Definition but have not gone through the approval process. This is to allow
>> us to adopt old code with permissive licenses. The package itself, though,
>> should use a well-known OSI-approved license.
> 
> I think a recommendation for packages whose authors don't have any strong
> preferences or that do not have other license constraints would be good to
> give (BSD? Anything else that's just as good?), because this will reduce
> unintended license incompatibilities between packages (not all OSI licenses
> are compatible, obviously).

"""
The recommended license for scikits projects is the (new) BSD license.
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html
"""

Unofficially, for David, I do recommend against using the BSD license for
wrappers of LGPLed or GPLed libraries. It just confuses matters. There probably
isn't much code in the wrapper that can be usefully separated from the library.
For such bits, people can simply ask you for a new license on the little bits of
code.

-- 
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