[Mpi-forum] MPI prototype license

[Jeff Squyres]

On Apr 3, 2009, at 3:04 PM, Supalov, Alexander wrote:

> Many prototypes are being developed currently for MPI-2.2 and MPI-3.  
> Under what license will they be made available to the community?  
> Certain types of licenses, like GPL, may not be suitable for  
> commercial adoption of the prototype code. BSD-like licenses are  
> normally acceptable. I think we should discuss this matter at the  
> Forum this time. You comments and suggestions are welcome.

I guess that raises the meta question -- what is the intent?  Is it a  
requirement that the proof-of-concept open source implementations must  
be licensed such that, in practice (not theory) they can be slurped  
into commercial/closed source MPI implementations?  Or is it enough  
that some people implemented it, some [other] people reviewed it, and  
the union of those people have said "yes, this shows what we want it  
to show"?  (and potentially a 3rd set of people who didn't look at the  
proof-of-concept implementation go re-implement it in their MPI  
implementation)

I thought the intent was to show that the concept was possible and to  
help unearth any "gotchas" in terms of implementation that might not  
be thought of during the design phase.

But to be clear: OMPI, where I have done all my implementation work  
for MPI 2.2 tickets, is BSD (IANAL, and none of this is legal advice  
-- go read our license yourself) so I don't really care too much.

-- 
Jeff Squyres
Cisco Systems