Hi Antony, Thanks for the comments.
Naturally MPIR will remain Open Source in every possible way and we will definitely be retaining full Windows support, including full MSVC build support. There'll be more (serious) license discussions in the coming days, so I don't want to pre-empt that. Today's announcement was clearly an April Fool's prank. We certainly couldn't move to BSD or a more permissive license, as we'd have to start again and throw out all the code we have that wasn't contributed under the more permissive rules. Bill. On 1 April 2010 23:52, Antony Vennard <antony.venn...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks guys, I'm going to add my two pence worth: > > I personally care about these things: > 1) that I can acquire the source for pretty much everything on my > computer, should I wish to; > 2) that I can redistribute, modify etc any of these programs without > seeking the owner's permission, or paying. > 3) that I can have any/all of my own contributions recognised in this > way, as can others. > > That's for open source. Now for this particular library: > 4) Windows support. It is *crucial* Windows support remains, because > whilst most "supercomputer" clusters I know of run Linux or Unix, entry > and even intermediate level work might well be done on a Mac or Windows. > Similarly, young developers will almost certainly be learning on Windows > - it's what universities teach on and what most people my age will be > writing code for, initially. The same goes for older "new-entrant" > programmers and anyone whose pc is "the family's pc". > 5) Development community. I know what valgrind is, how to use gdb. I've > assembled (gnu AS and NASM) gcd algorithms and I've read the x86-64 unix > ABI. That said, this project is almost definitely going to be a steep > learning curve for me - at my age (arguably any age) there is always > more to learn and any other attitude is nonsense. From all the > interactions I've had with the MPIR team, I see this as a community that > will accept new developers and bring any and all contributions on board > with nothing but positivity and enthusiasm. > > So for me, the choice of license isn't much of a biggie - provided it > remains "open source" I'm not sure I care whether it's BSD, ASL, MPL, > GPL, LGPL or whatever. What matters to me is the direction this project > is going, which matches exactly what I need. So by all means upgrade to > LGPLv3. > > That said, I don't think we should be "forced" into upgrading to LGPLv3 > - we should do it for the right reasons. The issues with GMP are > non-issues. The statement on the GMP website does not portray the full > facts of that particular commit, for starters. The fact is, I could fork > MPIR right now at LGPLv2 and any changes to MPIR's license would be > rendered ineffective anyway. As could anyone, at any time. I think there > is a more fundamental issue that GMP just didn't like their project > being forked and supporting Windows as a platform, which isn't in the > spirit of open source. Unfortunately for them, I could similarly fork > their project at LGPLv3 and introduce Windows support and another > development community too, as could anyone else. > > So, as far as I'm concerned, license isn't a big issue. > Cross-platform/architecture support and development community is. That's > what makes this project. > > Antony > > On 04/01/2010 08:41 AM, MPIR Team wrote: >> Dear Developers, >> >> As many will be aware, we posted recently about the baseless and >> unsubstantiated allegations on the GMP website and promised to >> respond. >> >> We had anticipated that merely drawing attention to this material >> would lead to unprecedented public outrage and negativity towards >> MPIR. Of course, no publicity is bad publicity and we felt that this >> latest advertising would be the best yet. But sadly, the wave of extra >> developer effort we anticipated from this just hasn't materialised. >> >> After spending a few thousand dollars of precious funding on focus >> groups and >> taking prospective developers to dinner, we believe we've identified >> the reason. The wave of hype did lead to a flurry of activity, but >> just not in the anticipated direction. >> >> As a result of this research, we've made some significant changes to >> our >> strategy. In particular, we wish to make an announcement: >> >> In a desire to allow people to spend less time fruitlessly searching >> MPIR releases for non-existent license infringements and hence more >> time on new code for our benefit, we have decided today to consider >> publishing future versions of MPIR under LGPL v3+ terms. >> >> We'd like the community to comment on this proposal. An announcement >> of our first v3+ version of MPIR will be forthcoming in a few days. >> >> Best Wishes >> >> The MPIR Team. >> >> MPIR: "building our eMPIRe one bignum at a time" >> "arithmetic without imitation" >> >> P.S: a <sponsor | http://tinyurl.com/y9dky9z> has expressed interest >> in a different <license | http://tinyurl.com/yhlegke>. >> > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "mpir-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to mpir-de...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mpir-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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