[GSLL-devel] Violation of the GFDL in GSLL

[Sébastien Villemot]

Hi,

Thanks for writing GSLL, it is a very useful piece of software for
scientists like me.

Since I am also a Debian Developer, I would like to package GSLL into
Debian. However a major issue needs to be solved before this can happen.

The problem is that documentation strings in GSLL are copied (and
possibly modified) from the GSL reference manual, which is licensed
under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). But GSLL is licensed
under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Therefore, the portions of
the GSL reference manual incorporated in the documentation strings have
been de facto relicensed under the GPL, which is a violation of the GFDL
(the two licenses being incompatible).

As such, this make GSLL unredistributable from a legal point of view.

I see only two possible solutions to this problem:

1. Ask the permission from the copyright holders of the GSL manual (i.e.
   the GSL Team) to incorporate parts of the GSL manual into the GSLL
   under the GPL. If such a permission has already been given, it should
   be mentioned somewhere in the GSLL source tree (I could not find it
   anywhere).

2. Strip from GSLL all documentation strings that incorporate material
   from the GSL manual.

Of course, 1 would be preferable over 2.

Thanks in advance for your feedback. I hope this issue can be solved, so
that GSLL makes its way into Debian.

Regards,

-- 
 .''`.    Sébastien Villemot
: :' :    Debian Developer
`. `'     http://www.dynare.org/sebastien
  `-      GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594
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