[Fwd: Re: [Help-glpk] GLPK GUROBI wrapper]

[Andrew Makhorin]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
From: Harley Mackenzie <address@hidden>
To: Matteo Salani <address@hidden>, Robbie Morrison
<address@hidden>, GLPK-HELP <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [Help-glpk] GLPK GUROBI wrapper
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 11:50:49 +1100

Matteo,

I know that the GPL licensing issues do seem heavy handed at times but there is 
a long standing 
approach to point out potential GPL license issues so that they may be resolved 
rather than 
discourage development or not value your contribution. The aim of the GPL is 
make sure that free 
software stays free as I am sure that you can understand that if someone takes 
GPL software code and 
makes it part of their own non-free software, then any changes or improvements 
to the code don't go 
back into the code and also someone can commercially exploit software developed 
by others for the 
benefit of everyone.

I am sure that it is not your intention to exploit anyone, and there a lots of 
people on this list 
who can look at what you are doing, see if there are any potential issues, and 
if there are work 
with you to resolve them. The last thing that anyone on this list wants is for 
people to feel that 
that shouldn't contribute to the software due to licensing issues or that their 
existing work or 
contributions aren't appreciated.

Harley


On 24/02/11 6:55 PM, Matteo Salani wrote:
> Robbie, list members,
>
> I did not want to raise this flame discussion about licenses...
> I wrote this wrapper form myself and a couple of colleagues and found it 
> useful.
>
> To me, it doesn't seem to violate any license.
> Anyway, if you think it does, please remove it from the list archives and 
> forget about it.
>
> all the best,
> Matteo
>
> On 02/24/2011 12:14 AM, Robbie Morrison wrote:
>> Hello list, hello Matteo
>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Subject:      Re: [Help-glpk] GLPK GUROBI wrapper
>>> From:         Andrew Makhorin
>>> Date:         Wed, 23 Feb 2011 22:58:42 +0300
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> On Wed, 2011-02-23 at 20:30 +0100, glpk xypron wrote:
>>>> Hello Matteo,
>>>>
>>>> running your code would violate the license of GLPK
>>>> because Gurobi is not licensed under a license
>>>> compatible to the Gnu Public License.
>>>>
>>>> Please, observe that Andrew chose to publish GLPK
>>>> under GPL and not LGPL.
>>>>
>>>> Best regards
>>>>
>>>> Xypron
>>> It depends on how Gurobi (which is highly proprietary
>>> software) is used within the wrapper assuming that the
>>> wrapper itself is distributed under the GNU GPL or a
>>> compatible license. I think that in this case Gurobi
>>> can be considered as a plug-in, so the following
>>> answers the question:
>>> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
>> I read thru 'wrapper_gurobi.c' carefully:
>>
>>    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-glpk/2011-02/txtgH2ubVmjpc.txt
>>
>> It seems to me that the final paragraph in the GNU
>> GPLAndPlugins section applies, which means this
>> constitutes a "borderline case".  Moreover Matteo's
>> program could probably be re-written in a scripting
>> language to enforce any necessary separations.
>> Hence my initial thought is that Matteo's code is
>> acceptable.
>>
>> Although not a legal consideration, I don't see
>> this single C file, released under the GPLv2, as
>> undermining GLPK in any way.  Or am I missing
>> something?
>>
>> If 'wrapper_gurobi.c' is deemed okay, then I will put
>> an entry for it in the GLPK wikibook.
>>
>> Whatever the decision, I would like to record my
>> appreciation to Matteo for attempting to contribute
>> back to the GLPK ecosystem. Cheers!
>>
>> Robbie
>> ---
>> Robbie Morrison
>> PhD student -- policy-oriented energy system simulation
>> Technical University of Berlin (TU-Berlin), Germany
>> University email (redirected) : address@hidden
>> Webmail (preferred)           : address@hidden
>> [from Webmail client]
>>
>>
>
>

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