On Aug 10, 10:21 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 10:09 PM, rjf <fate...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Aug 10, 2:00 pm, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 12:51 PM, rjf <fate...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > (RJF) Could you perhaps quote for us the DoD requirements? (and who
> > in DoD
> > > > requires them).
>
> > >(William) No, I definitely can't. Sorry I can't go into any further
> > details.
>
> > Fascinating.
>
> > Sage has only Open Source GPL code. That is "No Secrets". And with a
> > vengeance.
>
> > But
>
> > Sage apparently has a Secret Agreement with the DoD, one that is not
> > shared with contributors.
>
> Various groups of Sage users have requirements about software they import
> into their organizations. Instead of ignoring their requirements, I listen
> to these users. If I want them to have the option to use Sage, these
> requirements must be met. If they aren't met, they can't possibly use
> Sage.
>
> I put a lot of effort into providing a version of Sage that they can use.
> If somebody else wants to make a version of Sage that they can't use, then
> they should go for it (and host it on their own website -- not mine).
>
> There are many possible groups of potential Sage users alluded to above.
> For example, "people who at Microsoft" or "people who work at Boeing", or
> "people who work at Enthought (say)". The constraints for each group are
> different -- some are even impossible to satisfy.
>
> -- William
Continuing off topic, at least given the subject line...
But in sending out Berkeley UNIX for VAX (circa 1980-85) to
government, industry, and educational sites,
there was basically only one "requirement" demanded of us, that we
certify that the code we provided (added to the Bell Labs code)
was indeed authored by us and something we were entitled to give to
others. We explicitly never agreed to that.
The agreements were signed (after some hesitation) by even such
lawyered-up companies as IBM.
There was another requirement from one government agency; it wanted us
to certify that the work was not the
result of "convict labor:"
Since so many pieces of code are currently part of Sage, it seems
prudent to tell those developers what the constraints are, or else
they may suddenly find themselves excluded from Sage.
Or worse, they may be included in Sage and jeopardize uh, the security
of the USA. (I am assuming the Department of Defense you refer to is
the one of the USA).
RJF
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