Can ALPS be included in the Guix repo? The question is about the licenses.

Can ALPS be included in the Guix repo? The question is about the licenses.

[nigko]

Hello Guix!

The ALPS project* (Algorithms and Libraries for Physics Simulations) 
https://web.archive.org/web/20210508050408/https://alps.comp-phys.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page 
is an open source effort aiming at providing simulation codes for 
strongly correlated quantum mechanical systems as well as C++ libraries 
for simplifying the development of such code.

According to https://alps.comp-phys.org/mediawiki/index.php/Licensing 
the ALPS _Libraries_ are available for _academic and non-commercial_ use 
under the terms of the ALPS _Library_ License version 1.0,

https://web.archive.org/web/20210506121129/https://alps.comp-phys.org/static/software/ALPS/LICENSE.txt/,

the ALPS _Applications_ under the ALPS _Application_ License version 1.0,

https://web.archive.org/web/20210512081507/https://alps.comp-phys.org/static/software/applications/LICENSE.txt/.

I wonder can ALPS be included in the Guix repo? My concern is in the 
licenses. In particular, the ALPS licenses state that the ALPS is for 
"non-commercial academic use", but according to 
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html "a free program must be 
available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial 
distribution", which are in the contradiction.

Regards,
N Y

*Since 2022-10-21 the project is being dormant, 
https://green.physics.lsa.umich.edu/alps_legacy/index.php?title=Main_Page

Re: Can ALPS be included in the Guix repo? The question is about the licenses.

[Efraim Flashner]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2016 bytes --]

On Sat, Aug 12, 2023 at 04:03:31PM +0500, nigko wrote:
> Hello Guix!
> 
> The ALPS project* (Algorithms and Libraries for Physics Simulations) https://web.archive.org/web/20210508050408/https://alps.comp-phys.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page
> is an open source effort aiming at providing simulation codes for strongly
> correlated quantum mechanical systems as well as C++ libraries for
> simplifying the development of such code.
> 
> According to https://alps.comp-phys.org/mediawiki/index.php/Licensing the
> ALPS _Libraries_ are available for _academic and non-commercial_ use under
> the terms of the ALPS _Library_ License version 1.0,
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20210506121129/https://alps.comp-phys.org/static/software/ALPS/LICENSE.txt/,
> 
> the ALPS _Applications_ under the ALPS _Application_ License version 1.0,
> 
> https://web.archive.org/web/20210512081507/https://alps.comp-phys.org/static/software/applications/LICENSE.txt/.
> 
> I wonder can ALPS be included in the Guix repo? My concern is in the
> licenses. In particular, the ALPS licenses state that the ALPS is for
> "non-commercial academic use", but according to
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html "a free program must be
> available for commercial use, commercial development, and commercial
> distribution", which are in the contradiction.
> 
> Regards,
> N Y
> 
> *Since 2022-10-21 the project is being dormant,
> https://green.physics.lsa.umich.edu/alps_legacy/index.php?title=Main_Page
> 

Placing the limitation of 'academic and non-commercial' the license is
non-free and cannot be included in Guix proper.  If something depends on
it that you're looking to upstream it'll need to be buildable without
that library.

I apologize for being the bearer of sad news.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

Re: Can ALPS be included in the Guix repo? The question is about the licenses.

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Sun, 13 Aug 2023 at 17:31, Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il> wrote:

> Placing the limitation of 'academic and non-commercial' the license is
> non-free and cannot be included in Guix proper.  If something depends on
> it that you're looking to upstream it'll need to be buildable without
> that library.
>
> I apologize for being the bearer of sad news.

Not in Guix proprer because the license is not compliant but maybe this
kind of contribution could be welcome to the channel guix-science,

    https://github.com/guix-science/guix-science

or at worse guix-science-nonfree.

Cheers,
simon