[SciPy-User] Central File Exchange for SciPy

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

>> My personal opinion is that in the long run, it would be beneficial to
>> have this 'file exchange' have BSD-only code (or public domain, since
>> employees of the US Federal government as far as I understand must
>> publish their codes under public domain terms).
>
> The flip side of this is that there are many environments in which the
> distinction between GPL and BSD is irrelevant, eg for code we deploy
> internally at work and do not distribute.  Suppose someone writes some
> really nifty code that depends on pygsl.  I would rather have access
> to it on the file exchange than not.  If the code submission dialogs
> has a choice of licenses with BSD as the default, and selection of
> non-BSD takes them to an explanation of why we prefer BSD and an "are
> you sure" dialog, then including this code is beneficial in my view.

The risk is that people will tend to pick up code snippets from the
file exchange and paste them into their own code.   It will be very
easy for them to accidentally pick up GPL code and accidentally
relicense, leading to a viral licensing mess.

If we do go down that route, can I suggest that the pages for the GPL
code snippets have nice red flashing graphics either side saying
'warning - please be aware that including any part of this code in
your code means that all your code has to be GPL'.

See you,

Matthew