[Met_help] license problem

[John Halley Gotway]

Brain,

My name is John Halley-Gotway.  I work with Lacey, and I'm one of the developers working on MET.  I wanted to ask for a point of clarification on this issue you raised.

Are you under the impression that we're bundling GSL up with our code and redistributing GSL?  Because that is actually not the case.

We distribute a tarball for MET containing only the MET-specific source code.  MET relies on 4 main external libraries - GSL, F2C, NetCDF, and one called BUFRLIB.  We don't redistribute the code for 
these libraries, but rather, instruct users how to acquire them prior to building MET.

Since we're not actually distributing the GSL code itself, is compliance with the GPL still an issue?  Or is it the case that, since we're making calls to GSL routines, we need to be compliant with 
the GPL?  Please let me know if it's the latter, and I'll forward the "MET Terms of Use" and the GPL to our legal adviser and ask her to address this issue.

Thanks!
John

Brian Gough wrote:
> At Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:15:37 -0700,
> Lacey Holland wrote:
>> Thanks for pointing that out.  We'll quickly work to correct the problem.
>> Could you mention what you noticed that isn't compatible?
> 
> The main thing was
> 
>   Part 1.  You shall not sell, license or transfer for a fee the Software, or any work that in any manner contains the Software.
> 
> whereas under the GPL it must be possible to charge a fee for transferring copies.
> 
> I'm not an expert on the legal aspects so if you need more information
> I'd have to refer you to the appropriate people at the Free Software
> Foundation.
>