William, Thanks for your replies. I mostly want to know what the consensus interpretation of these issues is amongst the Sage devs. Slowly, I am getting a picture of what this consensus looks like.
> Publicly distributed code using GPL'd library must be GPL'd. Great, to first order that is my understanding as well. >> * Does the code run without sage? >> * Does a sage notebook constitute "source code" in the GPL sense? > > Yes. Again, this makes sense to me. Interestingly enough though, it doesn't seem like all of the people on the this feel this way. >> * Is a notebook (even one that uses the "python" mode) a derivative >> work of sage? > > No. >> * If a sage notebook is "source code" does clicking "Share" in the >> notebook constitute "distribution". In other words, if a bunch of >> people start sharing sage notebooks, do they all have to be GPL? > > No. This is internal distribution, so the GPL doesn't apply. This is > no different than the NSA (say) distributing a program from one > researcher to another, and obviously they don't have to GPL their > code. Ahh, this distinction between internal sharing and public distribution is important and I hadn't thought about that. >> The usage case I have in mind is using this to teach University >> courses in computational physics. I know others are already doing >> this (William is right now I think). If I share notebooks with >> students and they with me, does everything have to be GPL? > > No, definitely not. But if you post the notebooks publicly and they make use > of the sage library, then they have to be GPL'd. Great, this is what I thought. But, then some (or even many) Sage users and devs are in violation of the GPL. I think it would be useful to document these things somewhere so Sage users would know very clearly how the GPL affects them. >> If we only >> use non-GPL libraries and the "python" mode of the notebook could we >> choose a different license? > > Yes. Great. Thanks! Brian --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
