lapack license

lapack license

[Patrick Alken]

Hi all,

  I noticed that the recent release of lapack 3.1.0 contains a
license file (finally) which was never present in any previous
lapack release. Since there have been discussions on this list
in the past of the fuzzy lapack licensing issues, here is the
license:

--- snip ---

Copyright (c) 1992-2006 The University of Tennessee.  All rights
reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:

- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 
  
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
  notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer listed
  in this license in the documentation and/or other materials
  provided with the distribution.
  
- Neither the name of the copyright holders nor the names of its
  contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
  this software without specific prior written permission.

--- snip ---

I'm not an expert on free software licenses, but it looks like this
is similar to the original BSD license due to the "copyright notice
must be preserved" clause. Perhaps some more knowledgeable people
can comment on whether this is compatible with the GPL, since some of
the recent nonsymmetric eigenvalue code added to gsl was ported from
lapack. Mainly this would affect the eigenvector solver...most of
the eigenvalue code is not from lapack (i think there was just 1
routine which could probably be re-written).

Patrick Alken

Re: lapack license

[Patrick Alken]

Hi again,

  After reviewing the BSD licenses, it appears that the lapack
license is identical to the "modified BSD" license, which is
compatible with the GPL according to www.gnu.org.

  To comply with lapack's license, it seems we need to include
a copy of it with GSL though, since eigen/nonsymmv.c and
eigen/schur.c contain a few lapack routines.

Patrick Alken

On Fri, Jan 26, 2007 at 10:16:27AM -0700, Patrick Alken wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
>   I noticed that the recent release of lapack 3.1.0 contains a
> license file (finally) which was never present in any previous
> lapack release. Since there have been discussions on this list
> in the past of the fuzzy lapack licensing issues, here is the
> license:
> 
> --- snip ---
> 
> Copyright (c) 1992-2006 The University of Tennessee.  All rights
> reserved.
> 
> Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without 
> modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
> met:
> 
> - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
>   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 
>   
> - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
>   notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer listed
>   in this license in the documentation and/or other materials
>   provided with the distribution.
>   
> - Neither the name of the copyright holders nor the names of its
>   contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from
>   this software without specific prior written permission.
> 
> --- snip ---
> 
> I'm not an expert on free software licenses, but it looks like this
> is similar to the original BSD license due to the "copyright notice
> must be preserved" clause. Perhaps some more knowledgeable people
> can comment on whether this is compatible with the GPL, since some of
> the recent nonsymmetric eigenvalue code added to gsl was ported from
> lapack. Mainly this would affect the eigenvector solver...most of
> the eigenvalue code is not from lapack (i think there was just 1
> routine which could probably be re-written).
> 
> Patrick Alken
> 

Re: lapack license

[Brian Gough]

At Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:57:21 -0700,
Patrick Alken wrote:
>   After reviewing the BSD licenses, it appears that the lapack
> license is identical to the "modified BSD" license, which is
> compatible with the GPL according to www.gnu.org.
> 
>   To comply with lapack's license, it seems we need to include
> a copy of it with GSL though, since eigen/nonsymmv.c and
> eigen/schur.c contain a few lapack routines.

That's ok, other GNU software also includes routines under the
modified BSD license (e.g. the GNU C Library). Just add the notice in
the affected files with a note "Based on original code from LAPACK:
....".  If there are files where you have some independently written
routines it may make sense to split them so it is clear which parts
are covered each license.  

I will add the disclaimer into the reference manual.

-- 
Brian Gough