Re: ATLAS license discussion, please

It sounds like you and whoever the "entity" are that's behind ATLAS
need to have a discussion with an attorney, and perhaps an accountant.
As a user, I hate "academic licenses" (free in binary form to academic
users but paid for by "commercial" users), but the reality of today's
world is that an academic license or some form of similar license
might be the best way to proceed with ATLAS, especially since you've
broadened the scope of it to the growing ARM platform. Maybe there
needs to be an "ATLAS Linear Algebra" foundation.

It really *is* about money, even if you want to think it's about
"freedom". There are hidden costs of "free as in beer". People who
develop quality software like ATLAS deserve to be paid just as much as
the attorneys and accountants who fight over it and the sales reps who
sell it. ;-)

On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 8:13 AM, Clint Whaley <whaley@...> wrote:
> John,
>
>>You might look at the C++ Boost licence, this is specifically designed to allow
>>both free use of the Boost library, Standardisation of the intellectual content,
>>and commercialisation.
>
> Hmm.  I see no mention of patents at all, and what I do see does not seem
> at all different from the present BSD license.  If there is a more modern
> version of this license, can you link directly to it?
>
>>If you take the GNU path you're
>>*endorsing* the kind of legal system that also supports software
>>patents and authoritarianism.
>
> You will have explain that, because I truly see no logical way to reach
> that conclusion.
>
>>GNU chose to leverage the legal system
>>to satisfy its primary goal: open-ness. GNU licences are not, by
>>any stretch of the imagination, supporting "free" software as in
>>"freedom of use for any purpose".
>
> I agree, they put restrictions on usage to maintain openness and equal access.
> Camm (old ATLAS/debian maintainer) also mention that the GNU licenses are
> better because they assure poeple that pure parisitism will be illegal.
> Everyone can use the code, but everyone must submit their improvements
> back to the code base, so if you want to benefit from community development,
> you must also contribute to it.  As I have been more involved with large
> US corporations, I have more come to see the necessity of this.
>
>>You must think: do you approve, for example, Apple taking BSD Unix
>>and making a proprietary product with it?
>
> I don't mind people using ATLAS in proprietary products, but I must admit
> I'd like to get some credit and I would hope they would contribute
> patches, etc., since they are benefiting from that work.
>
>>Do you approve Apple
>>being "forced" to throw out GNU Gcc support in favour of LLVM just
>>because of GNU's licence policy?
>
> Can you explain this?  This is not the story as I know it, but I haven't
> studied it in detail.  My understanding is the exact opposite: Apple
> *chose* to support LLVM because they did not want to follow the GNU license.
>
> Apple seems to have a long history of taking free software, but never
> giving back to it.  I.e., they use your software in proprietary products,
> but they don't even give patches to the original authors.  In those
> cases here they were compelled to give patches by the license, they
> gave code dumps that were not useful (going on a Konquerer mailing
> list discussion I read long ago).
>
> Then, Apple wrote their App store license in such a way as to incompatible
> with GNU license, and instead of fixing their app store terms, they decided
> to go full-bore against GNU.  How do you get that they have been forced
> to do these things?
>
> In a world of individuals, I like the BSD license.  When I first did ATLAS,
> I saw the world I lived in as primarily controlled by individuals.  My
> experience these days is that much more of the academic and software
> worlds is controlled by corporations, which are by design sociopaths.
> Apple appears to me to be a primary example of this: suing everyone for
> BS like software & design patents, acquiring more patents to lock out
> others from compitition, using open source software but never giving
> back to it except where such a gift is to their exclusive benefit.
>
>>Now, the other thing to think about is: what possible litigation could arise?
>>ANY litigation is a major negative. You neither want to sue someone nor
>>be sued.
>
> Yes, I don't want to sue or be sued.  However, I also don't want my software
> to help people who want to sue other people for anticompetitive BS.
>
>>By analogy, if you put software in which you claim intellectual property rights
>>on the Internet and do not provide a reasonable way of enforcing your
>>rights, it may at least be that you have violated your own ability to claim
>>any rights at all. After all, if I can simply download your software, without
>>signing a paper saying I read and accept the licence terms,
>>who is to say I have broken any laws? What if the download is done
>>by a robot? What if that robot is a system backup?
>
> I think the GNU folks have addressed this.  They give a license to use
> their copyrighted works.  If you don't accept the license, then you
> don't have the right to use their works, and since it is copyrighted,
> you know you need a license.
>
>>My point really is: what's the point of trying to enforce a copyright with
>>possible exemptions which in fact you not only cannot enforce due to
>>lack of funds .. but probably don't even want to enforce?
>>
>>It is generally considered that in the woeful US and European legal
>>systems you actually need a licence to prevent someone taking
>>your work, copyrighting it or patenting something YOU invented,
>>and then suing YOU for breaching their rights.
>>
>>Luckily, the primary motivation in such cases is commerical gain: if you're
>>not making a commercial gain or interfering with someone else making
>>one there are no grounds for a suit.
>
> I am also considering that in a world where many developers are controlled
> by sociopathic corporations, it is necessary to put restrictions on your
> software so that it is not used by those corporations to destroy the
> freedom of others to develop code.  When they are willing to so nakedly
> restrain the freedom of others, it becomes more important to make sure
> your contributions do not help them destroy what you believe in.
>
> Thanks,
> Clint
>>
> Ed Borasky wrote:
>
> "My recommendation is
> to consult an attorney. He / she may advise creating an "entity" to
> house the intellectual property before devising a license."
>
> and there is much sense in that: a separate entity holding the
> property my provide your private assets some protection.
>
> If Google stole my software and commercialised it I'd be ecstatic!
>
> IMHO the major concern is not people doing math with your software,
> but people releasing a product (such as a programming language)
> which has the kind of licence THEY want. If you want such people to
> use your software you MUST provide the most liberal licence possible.
>
> For example if my programming language Felix were to incorporate
> Atlas as a "standard" component, your licence would have to be
> compatible with mine (BSD camp: my actual licence is FFAU:
> free for any use). Any GPL licence would conflict with that and exclude
> such use, at best I would be forced to distribute and build your product
> in a special way to ensure your software was kept "at arms length"
> from mine so your licence didn't pollute mine .. or simply not use
> your software.
>
> I have in fact spent considerable effort ensuring I did NOT incorporate
> any software polluted with Gnu licences. Unfortunate since some
> of it is very good. For example to utilise Gnu's Multiple precision
> arithmetic package I was forced to write the interface (header
> file equivalent) by hand, since generating one automatically
> from the C header would render the product "a derived work".
> A hand written interface supporting the required protocol is
> not a derived work because it is derived from the intellectual property
> but not the embodiment of it.
>
>
> The point here is to strongly consider indirect use of your product:
> it is OTHER people's licensing desires you need to think about when
> constructing your own, if you want your product to be widely used.
>
>
>
>
> --
> john skaller
> skaller@...
>
>
>
>
>
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> **************************************************************************
> ** R. Clint Whaley, PhD ** Assist Prof, UTSA ** www.cs.utsa.edu/~whaley **
> **************************************************************************
>
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