TG: "blatant falsehoods and sinister insinuations"

[William Stein]

Hi,

Torbjorn Granlund:
> I heard such a rumour, but I refused to believe it; Microsoft's money
> has dictated what license a project previously known to be free (as in
> freedom) will use.[...]
> There is a contract between Microsoft and SAGE stipulating that SAGE
> stay GPL 2.  Do you deny this?"

Just so you know, yes, we can flatly deny that.  There is *no* contract
between Microsoft and Sage.  Microsoft Research gave us funding
as an unrestricted gift, and mentioned to us that they can't use anything
we give them if it contains GPLv3+ code.  Out of respect we intend
to deliver a version of Sage to them that contains no GPLv3+ code.

I'm very appreciative of Microsoft funding open source mathematical
software development, and I think it is a great step in the right direction.

Torbjorn Granlung:
> I think it's rather well-know that I am not making money of GMP.  On
> the contrary, I have volunteered about 5 years on it, instead of
> working for a salary.

The *perception* -- wrong or right -- is not that you actually make
much money, but that you try to make money by only allowing
certain code into GMP if you're paid to do so.

Torbjorn Granlung:
> I certainly cannot veto any such change.

OK, that's useful to know.

Torbjorn Granlung:
> I have rejected "project" files for Microsoft's IDE, but that doesn't
> mean GMP doesn't build under Windoze.

Why did you reject those files?

Torbjorn Granlung:
> Very true.  GMP is not everyone's dump.  But now there is a fork that
> will fill that role.  :-)

Code that goes into MPIR will be refereed in a transparent manner, just
as we do with Sage.

 -- William



-- 
William Stein
Associate Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org