[SciPy-user] Re[2]: ANN: Veusz 0.5 - a scientific plotting package

[Robert Kern]

Gerard Vermeulen wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 18:57:06 -0700
> Robert Kern <rkern at ucsd.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Alan G Isaac wrote:
>>
>>>On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Jeremy Sanders apparently wrote: 
>>>
>>>
>>>>There may be licence issues here of course. 
>>>
>>>
>>>Indeed.  Have you considered the modified BSD license 
>>>or the (recent) License of Python?  
>>>http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/license-list.html
>>>Or does the use of PyQT make this impossible?
>>
>>No, it doesn't. The modified BSD license is compatible with the GPL.
>>
>>But please don't use the PSF License. It has proper names embedded in it.
>>
> 
> If you do not use commercial licensed releases of PyQt and Qt, you
> are using the GPL versions.  This implies that you have to release
> your software based on PyQt also under the GPL license.
> 
> The modified BSD being compatible with the GPL does not mean that
> you can release GPL derived works under the BSD license.

The work as a whole must be distributed under the terms of the GPL. 
However, Jeremy's code can be under whatever license he wishes as long 
as it is compatible with the GPL. If he chose the modified BSD license, 
one could take pieces of that code, inasmuch as they are separable from 
PyQt, and incorporate them into matplotlib. Just because the 
BSD-licensed code is combined with GPL-licensed code doesn't mean that 
the BSD-licensed code is not BSD-licensed.

Or if he feels like avoiding this silliness, Jeremy could, if he wanted 
to, just separately license the bits that other people want to use in 
BSDish-licensed, non-PyQt projects.

-- 
Robert Kern
rkern at ucsd.edu

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
  Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
   -- Richard Harter