[SciPy-dev] arpack wrapper status

[Robert Kern]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 19:42, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 9:54 AM, Aric Hagberg <hagberg at lanl.gov> wrote:
>
>>
>> I read through the threads related to including ARPACK in Debian
>> and Fedora. The issue appears to be with the clause
>>
>> " . Written notification is provided to the developers of  intent to
>>    use this software.  Also, we ask that use of ARPACK is properly
>>    cited in any resulting publications or software documentation."
>>
>> which violates the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
>
> I am surprised this is the only problematic part. I think the third
> clause of their license as much of a problem:
>
> "If you modify the source for these routines we ask that you change
> the name of the routine and comment the changes made to the original."
>
> It means that as it is, we are even breaking the license terms. I feel
> a bit guilty, I wrongly assumed ARPACK was similar to LAPACK/BLAS, I
> should have checked before doing changes to our internal copy of it.

"ask" is the operative word. It's not a requirement of the license.

-- 
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