Hi Mark,
Mark R. Diggory wrote:
Wolfgang,
Can you comment on your decision to remove the dependency of Paul Houle's RngPack implementation?
RngPack is GPL'd, and this was a problem for many. If it would be LGPL's or Apache style, it would not pose (or have posed) a problem. So the removal is due too licensing concerns, not due too any technical consideration.
I think some information has not gotten to you. Paul Houle has just re-released RngPack under a BSD style license. We're discussing other Licensing options as well.
I've been discussing with Paul the possibility of a establishing a consortium style "Service Provider" interface for "Research Grade" random number generators (separate from the java.security.SecureRandom API). Is this something you may have an interest in?
At first sight, this seems a little overkill (cost/benefit). My guess is that a minimal interface would do fine for most people, and a consortium, service providers, factories, abstract classes and default search mechanisms do not "pull their weight" just to get hold of a random number generator.
I think I exagerated a bit with the use of term "consortium". I'm mostly just refering to something like the java.security.SecureRandom SPI (practically Identical but specifically not for encryption grade RNG). This way, if you write an application that uses (lets call it RandomFactory), and there are service providers for a bunch of different Random Number generators out there, then you don't need to "rewrite" your code to test it performance/correlation on different generators.
Also, can you possibly comment on your position and or interest concerning the possible inclusion of some parts of your codebase into Jakarta Commons Math in the possible future? That is, if our ASF licensing permits.
Overall, I've moved on to other areas (P2P databases). So these days, I'm maintaining colt on a very minimal time budget, and if someone else (like jakarta-commons) picks up the theme, it would be very good and welcome.
Interestingly, I'm becoming involved with some efforts here at Harvard to implement what we're calling the "Crimson Grid Initiative". I may be reviewing your software (Firefish and Spitfire) in the near future :-)
Feel free to include parts of colt into commons and modify as you feel appropriate under the license, which is Apache-style, and requires the copyright to be retained. I gather that this could be the crux for ASF. Unfortunately I myself can't transfer the copyright, since it does not belong to me, but rather my (former) research organisation, CERN. If this should not work for ASF, colt may still be worth looking at when contemplating your design and impl. questions.
I will be consulting with ASF to find out exactly what we can work with while maintaining copyright. Unfortunately, this may be a limitiation. But I'll try to find out more before speculating any further.
Many Thanks, Mark
-- Mark Diggory Software Developer Harvard MIT Data Center http://osprey.hmdc.harvard.edu
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