GMP license problem, anyone?

[William Stein]

> The discussion has revealed several important things though: That the
> background to some SAGE developers' actions is to be traced back to a
> deal they have with Microsoft.  We now have it from the horse's mouth
> that they promised Microsoft to stay with L(GPL)v2+ and thus at least

Supporting users of Sage who can't use GPLv3+ code was indeed
one of the many many reasons.

> We have also learned that SAGE will make a non-free private release to
> Microsoft.

You just blatantly made that up!  There is no non-free private release
of Sage that will be made available only for Microsoft.   Anything
the Sage project makes available for Microsoft will be freely available
to everybody.

>  In return they get a "donation".  I'd call this selling
> free software, hoarding the specific sources for the release.

Are you seriously against being paid to work on free software?

Stockholm, Feb 7, 2002. Torbjorn Granlund, President, CEO, and
Chairman of the Board, of SWOX, the worldwide market leader in
compiler technologies and specialized software, will head the new
merged entity, that will maintain the name SWOX. An excited Mr.
Granlund comments "This acquisition will allow us to further extend
our lead in the custom software compiler area, and facilities our
accelerating growth in a challenging economic environment".

http://swox.com/press.html

> But I do have a problem with SAGE's closed special Microsoft release
> in exchange for a "donation".  Not because they, like Maple et al, are
> making money from other people's work, but because of the closed
> release.

You made up these assertions about there being a closed release.
There is and never has been any plan to make a "closed release".


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