On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 10:24 AM, Matthew Brett
On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 4:28 AM, Nathaniel Smith
wrote: On 30 Oct 2014 11:12, "Sturla Molden"
wrote: Nathaniel Smith
wrote: [*] Actually, we could, but the binaries would be tainted with a viral license.
And binaries linked with MKL are tainted by a proprietary license... They have very similar effects,
The MKL license is proprietary but not viral.
If you like, but I think you are getting confused by the vividness of anti-GPL rhetoric. GPL and proprietary software are identical in that you have to pay some price if you want to legally redistribute derivative works (e.g. numpy + MKL/FFTW + other software). For proprietary software the price is money and other random more or less onerous conditions (e.g. anti-benchmarking and anti-reverse-engineering clauses are common). For GPL software the price is that you have to let people reuse your source code for free. That's literally all that "viral" means.
I wrote a summary of the MKL license problems here:
https://github.com/numpy/numpy/wiki/Numerical-software-on-Windows#blas--lapa...
In summary, if you distribute something with the MKL you have to:
* require your users to agree to a license forbidding them from reverse-engineering the MKL * indemnify Intel against being sued as a result of using MKL in your binaries
Sorry - I should point out that this last 'indemnify' clause is "including attorney's fees". Meaning that, if someone sues Intel because of your software, you have to pay Intel's attorney's fees. Matthew