gEDA-dev: GPL3

[al davis]

On Tuesday 07 August 2007, DJ Delorie wrote:
> > Do we have any interest in moving the project to GPL3
> > licensing terms?
>
> I don't think it really matters for geda, the changes are
> mostly for embedded and web-app software, neither of which
> geda is.

Gnucap is moving to GPL-3.

There are also changes related to patents, which are relevant to 
gnucap.  ACS (predecessor to gnucap) introduced some algorithms 
that have become the basis of some of the "Fast-Spice" 
simulators.  There are patents covering some of them, now 
mostly owned by Synopsys, but ACS predates the patents by 
several years.

The "embedded" aspect is also important.  Many special tools use 
a simulator under the hood.

It is easy for gnucap to make the change, because of the plug-in 
system.  Plugins may be licensed different from the core, 
provided they are distributed separately.  Most of the existing 
plug-ins are under the BSD license.  The ones distributed with 
the core are GPL.

I don't know what the impact is for gschem and pcb.  I suspect 
that Icarus Verilog could benefit by changing to GPL-3.