scientific license - fedora compatible?

[Tim Fenn]

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 12:04:36AM +0100, Jonathan Underwood wrote:
> On 22/05/06, Patrice Dumas <pertusus at free.fr> wrote:
> >There are many terms in the licence that are incompatible with free 
> >software
> >(obligation to send back patches, only academic use...), so not compatible
> >with fedora.
> 
> Yes, that was my reading to. However, having read through all 20 pages
> (!!) of their license file, it seems clear that their intentions are
> good, and that their main concern is that the source code is kept open
> and free, though they are clumsy in the execution of that. CCLRC is a
> publically (tax payer) funded research council here in the UK, and I
> would imagine that they are committed to keeping the source open. I
> suspect that a carefully worded letter/email explaining the problems
> with the license and offering suggested solutions would be well
> received once they are convinced that the GPL would serve their needs.
> 

Thanks all - I'll see if I can discuss this with the developers and/or
the CCLRC and get something straightened out.  As far as I understand
it, the reason they avoided the (L)GPL was due to concerns over its
legal standing in the UK:

http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/01/08/open_source_licenses
http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/01/24/MoreOnOpenSource
http://home.badc.rl.ac.uk/lawrence/blog/2005/01/25/legal_stuff

Rather than work out these difficulties with the FSF(E), the CCLRC
found it best to come up with their own licensing scheme, it seems.

Regards,
Tim