[SciPy-dev] arpack wrapper status

[Robert Kern]

On Fri, Nov 14, 2008 at 17:07, Aric Hagberg <hagberg at lanl.gov> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 06:45:46PM -0500, Nathan Bell wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 1:04 PM, Ondrej Certik <ondrej at certik.cz> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Did they refuse to re-license ARPACK under something explicitly
>> >> compatible?
>> >
>> > I don't know. One should ask the arpack developers.
>> >
>>
>> Aric, do you want to take the lead on this one?  If not, I can give it a try.
>>
>> I'm not sure what is required from them.  Does an email stating "we
>> agree to release ARPACK under the standard, three-clause BSD license"
>> suffice?
>
> I exchanged email with Professor Sorensen and explained the issue
> with the current ARPACK license.
>
> He is definitely concerned about this and committed to do the work to
> relicense.  This will be no small amount of work for him so I want to make
> sure we get it right.
>
> His intent is that ARPACK should be able to be used everywhere LAPACK
> is used and suggested licensing it that way.  My understanding is that
> the current LAPACK license is exactly the 3-clause BSD ("modified
> BSD") so that is what I suggested.  T
>
> Please let me know if there is anything I am missing here.

The remainder of the previous sentence starting with "T"?  :-)

Thanks for taking charge with this. This is good news. Yes, the LAPACK
license is the standard 3-clause BSD license acceptable for scipy
(it's almost, if not entirely identical to scipy's). A copy is here:

  http://netlib.org/lapack/COPYING

-- 
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