[SciPy-dev] contributing a CHOLMOD wrapper

[Robert Kern]

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 15:28, Gael Varoquaux
<gael.varoquaux at normalesup.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 04, 2009 at 01:25:12PM -0800, Nathaniel Smith wrote:

>> CHOLMOD is GPLed, so I suppose my wrapper must be as well, and is thus
>> unsuitable for inclusion in Scipy proper -- though scipy.sparse
>> already has a wrapper for the GPLed UMFPACK, so I guess I might be
>> wrong?

No, you're right. The UMFPACK support there has always been optional.
However, we don't want to add more optional components into scipy and
have been pushing this one out to scikits.umfpack.

> I would put the code in BSD, just to make it clear that people are
> welcomed to derive work for the code in BSD license, but I would make it
> clear that the package itself is contaminated.

I'd probably go the other way. Make it GPLed, but add a note that you
will relicense your parts of the code on request. Having wrappers with
a different license than the library itself is usually just confusing
for very little benefit. The code in the wrapper itself is usually not
very interesting.

-- 
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