Dear Moses Dev, NLTK has a Python port of the word tokenizer in Moses. The tokenizer works well in Python and create a good synergy to bridge Python users to the code that Moses developers have spent years to hone.
But it seemed to have hit a wall with some licensing issues. https://github.com/nltk/nltk/issues/2000 General port of LGPL code is considered derivative and is incompatible with Apache or MIT license. I understand that LGPL keeps derivative from being proprietary but it's a little less permissive than non-copyleft license like Apache and MIT licenses. Note that this licensing issue might also affect Marian which is MIT license and also incompatible with LGPL so although technically users can chain the code from different libraries, but Marian couldn't have any dependencies on the Moses components. (But we know do know that none of our models built with Marian would work without the Moses tokenizer which is in LGPL). Would there be a possibility to dual license the Moses repository with LGPL and Apache/BSD/MIT license. I'm not sure whether it's allowed to have dual licenses with LGPL and Apache/BSD/MIT license though. Might have to check with some proper legal personnel though. If dual license is not possible would it be possible relicense the code under BSD/Apache/MIT license? That way it's more permissive for derivatiive work? I think the last scenario is for NLTK to drop the Python port of Moses code entirely from Apache license repository but I think that'll remove the synergy between various OSS. Hope to hear from Moses devs soon! Regards, Liling
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