We keep bumping into the useful libraries that are GPL (most recently
FFTW, which is GPL with commercial licenses available). My proposal is
that we allow dependencies against such libraries as long as
- the code which depends on the library is gathered into a self
contained module which is, itself, GPL
and
- IMP as a whole does not require the library to function, only
certain functionality is missing
The reason for this suggestion is that
- the LGPL, under which we plan to license IMP, allows the code under
it to be relicensed under GPL
- most people in a research environment will not care if their
resulting application is GPL or LGPL
- reimplenenting things ourselves is a pain and best put off until we
really need to create an application which is not GPL (for example
linking with Chimera).