[GiNaC-list] sympy is NOT a derived work

Alexei Sheplyakov varg at theor.jinr.ru
Tue Jan 1 17:44:30 CET 2008


Hello!

On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 02:24:33PM +0100, Ondrej Certik wrote:

> and there we also discussed sympy and ginac and licensing issues
> and we came to the conclusion, that just by copying a C++ code
> to Python (by hand) is a derived work.

Disclaimer:
IANAL, you should consult a lawyer to get a definitive answer.

AFAIK, looking at the code and re-implementing the algorithm counts as
a reverse engineering (GPL does NOT forbid it), and it does not make your
code a derived work. Moreover, the algorithms in question are described in
virtually any textbook on the symbolic computations. So, I think it is OK
to use whatever license you like. That said, I don't think BSD one is
a good choice (it will certainly distract some potential contributors),
but that's a matter of my personal preferences.

>we decided to use BSD, because it's more free
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Could you please refrain from claims like this? Pretty *please*.

Best regards,
	Alexei

-- 
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.

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