[Developers] ADMB-IDE licensing

[John Sibert]

Arni -
You clearly have educated yourself well on these matters. I look forward 
to giving your IDE a try.
Thanks for efforts.
John

Arni Magnusson wrote:
> All right, here are some references I have found regarding licensing 
> of aggregates that include GPL components. I'm assuming everyone on 
> developers at admb-project.org is interested in how these things work, 
> and I'm also hoping that some of you understand this better than I do. 
> Please let me know if your interpretation of the licenses differs from 
> mine.
>
>
> [1] https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2006-May/106245.html
>
> The dicussion following the GPL licensing of glmmADMB highlights the 
> main issue, even though ADMB has gone open source since that discussion.
>
> ADMB uses BSD to allow users to release models as proprietary 
> executables. When this is done, it must be made clear to all 
> recipients that they are not allowed to bundle that executable inside 
> a GPL package. Any package user can then insist to have the source 
> code for the executable, so it would lose its proprietary status.
>
> An important question is whether ADMB users are allowed to bundle BSD 
> executables inside a GPL package. The knee-jerk response is no, but 
> I'm not so sure. If glmmADMB is released as a GPL package today, then 
> R users have the right to see, modify, and share source code - meaning 
> the TPL and C++ code, even of ADMB itself. What they cannot is to 
> alter the BSD license of that model (since it does not call R), much 
> less of ADMB itself.
>
> This is walking on a thin line that we need to understand fully. What 
> is your understanding of this issue? This is not relevant for 
> ADMB-IDE, by the way, as shown below.
>
>
> [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation
>
> The ADMB-IDE installer is an aggregate, distributing separate programs 
> together in one installer archive. The GPL permits me to create and 
> distribute an aggregate, even when the licenses of the other software 
> are non-free or GPL-incompatible.
>
> The only condition is that I cannot release the installer under a 
> license that prohibits users from exercising rights that each 
> program's individual license would grant them. This means that ADMB, 
> GCC, and Emacs must include their original licence text inside each 
> directory.
>
>
> [3] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLCompatInstaller
>
> The license of the installation software does affect the installed
> components, any more than a zip file would.
>
>
> [4] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#NonFreeTools
>
> Which programs you use to edit the source code, or to compile it, or 
> study it, or record it, usually makes no difference for issues 
> concerning the licensing of that source code. In other words, it's 
> nobody's business whether you use Emacs with ADMB-IDE, Notepad, diff, 
> Visual C++, or any other other programs to work with ADMB code.
>
>
> [5] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CanIUseGPLToolsForNF
>
> Using Emacs, GCC, or other GPL programs to write and compile code does 
> not place any license restrictions on the code or executables.
>
>
> [5] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLModuleLicense
>
> My admb-mode and .emacs components call Emacs and therefore need to be 
> GPL-compatible. Potential licenses include GPL, LGPL, and BSD.
>
>
> [6] http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#section4
>
> GPL legalese, saying that my distribution of Emacs and GCC is called 
> "conveying verbatim copies". The original license text should be 
> intact inside their directories.
>
>
> [7] http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#section5
>
> GPL legalese, where the last paragraph rephrases item [2].
>
>
> [8] http://opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html#section6
>
> GPL legalese, where option 6b says I should indicate where GCC and 
> Emacs can be downloaded in source code form. That's 
> ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/ and ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcc/.
>
> ---
>
> In short, it looks like I can distribute the simple click'n'go 
> installer, where each component has its own license. I don't think it 
> really matters which GPL-compatible license I use for my admb-mode and 
> .emacs (BSD, GPL, LGPL), so I guess I'll go for BSD to align them with 
> ADMB.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Arni
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