GMP forked; Torbjorn Granlund: "blatant falsehoods and sinister insinuations"

[Torbjorn Granlund]

"William Stein" <wstein at gmail.com> writes:

  2. FACT: The GMP project is not developer friendly. This is easy to
  see by reading the GMP mailing lists.
  
Funny, but I cannot find your name there at all!

  3. FACT: The GMP project does not have a regular and
  predictable release cycle. How many times has the GMP 5.0 release
  been moved back -- it used to be "sometime in 2007", but now the
  GMP site says "5.0 is planned to come out in a couple of years."
  
I new GMP release is made about once per year.

GMP 5 will be released when it is ready, but the mpn design and
implementation work needs careful work.  I will let it take the time
it needs.

  4. FACT: The working code repository of GMP is closed.  There is
  no public svn, etc. repository so that anybody can look at the latest
  version of the GMP code. See 2.
  
Modules are released in the gmplib.org/devel/ area as they are
completed.

  5. FACT: Some extremely capable developers do not want to contribute to
  an LGPL'd project, because they don't want their voluntary contributions
  to be used by Maple, Mathematica and Magma to make money.

Maybe so.

Now, now, I hear a rumor that SAGE is making private special SAGE
releases to Microsoft Research, and gets "donations" in return.

In what way is that different from Maple's, Mathematica's, and Magma's
money making?  I see one critical difference.  You sell a private
release of GPL'ed and LGPL'ed code, completely against the intentions
of the developers of the various packages.

IANAL, but I would be surprised if such private releases are not in
breach of the GPL.  It is certianly against the spirit of the GPL.

  6. FACT: The GMP project is unfriendly toward natively supporting
  Microsoft Windows using MSVC.  Just see any email you have sent
  to Brian Gladdman.

Backing up your claims with uncheckable statements?

  7. FACT: The GMP project has been unfriendly toward supporting OS X.
  Just search the gmp list archives for OS X.
  
Oh yes, it didn't work when OS X came out, but the next release of GMP
did support it.  Unfriendly?

But I admit I got quite annoyed by the bickering about it, and
claimed I would never support it, just to stop the bickering.
  
  I have been approached by numerous people (from industry,
  government, etc.) over the last three years about forking GMP.

Oh yeah.  We believe you.  Funny they approached you of all people in
this word, when you have contributed zero (nada, null, 0) to GMP.  How
did these people know you'd be the right person to approach?  :-)

  This is not surprising in light of numerous quotes by Stallman about
  how GPLv3 was designed partly to attack Microsoft.  For example:
  
   Stallman: "The point of the GPLv3 conditions that apply to the
   Novell/Microsoft deal is to give the rest of the community a defense
   against Microsoft's patent threats. If these conditions do their job,
   the result will be that Microsoft never goes beyond threats, and the
   community is safe."

You must be reading that with a major bias if you think this is
evidence that "GPLv3 was designed partly to attack Microsoft".

-- 
Torbjörn