search

peterwittek / Somoclu.jl

Julia package for Somoclu -- Massively parallel self-organizing maps: accelerate training on multicore CPUs and GPUs
MIT License
14 stars 5 forks source link

Change the license model - GPL3 is too restrictive #6

Closed sambitdash closed 6 years ago

sambitdash commented 6 years ago

The package is shared as GPL-3. As most Julia packages are libraries any code which will like to use this package has to develop code to use these APIs. That will make any code used a potential derivative work. That may lead to concerns for commercial development work.

peterwittek commented 6 years ago

Good point. I regret for choosing GPL-3 for my other projects, exactly for the points you bring up. Any preference between BSD and MIT licenses?

sambitdash commented 6 years ago

I prefer MIT as most Julia projects are MIT and it most compatible to the ecosystem.

I looked at further details to find the original C/C++ code is developed with GPL-3 as well. In that case packaging the libraries or use the library to install the C/C++ code may be construed as derivative work. Although, there can be deferring views on this interpretation.

The other approach may be to implement SOM in native Julia with a more permissible license and have Julia handle the optimizations.

peterwittek commented 6 years ago

Done. The C/C++ code has Julia-specific parts, and that is under GPL-3. Yet, using this wrapper only needs a binary .so of the GPL-ed code, so I would not look it at as a derived work.

sambitdash commented 6 years ago

Derived work is not defined very clearly in GPL and that leads to confusion. However, as the author and owner of the copyright you agree that linking to GPL-ed .so library will not amount to derived work will clearly allow people to use the Julia library without any confusion. Thank you for the quick update.