Re: [eigen] New Licensing FAQ

[Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

2010/1/28 Ricard Marxer Piñón <email@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Hi,
>
> Here at the Music Technology Group (Pompeu Fabra University,
> Barcelona) we are extensively using Eigen for many research projects.
> I'm specifically working on a research project for Yamaha here at MTG
> in which we are using Eigen for everything that is signal processing
> related.

Great news!
I didn't know about that. If you think that it would be OK to say it
prominently, feel free to edit the main page of the wiki,
http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Main_Page#Projects_using_Eigen
probably under 'engineering'.

>
> We are really happy with the library and as the word is spreading,
> more and more people here are starting to use it, so congratulations
> for the great work.

Thanks for the kind words and the good news!

Benoit

>
> ricard
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 6:56 AM, Daniel Stonier <d.stonier@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 2010/1/28 Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx>:
>>> 2010/1/27 Rohit Garg <rpg.314@xxxxxxxxx>:
>>>> Seems good enough.
>>>>
>>>> It'd be interesting to know which commercial companies/products are
>>>> using eigen, if it is possible to list them on the wiki.
>>>
>>> Let's be very careful before listing companies on the wiki! They may
>>> not want the world to know what libraries they are using, especially
>>> when this is for internal usage.
>>>
>>> Even if a company is using Eigen publicly, I'd still ask for
>>> permission before mentioning them prominently on our main page.
>>>
>>> I'll write to you privately to let you know :)
>>> Benoit
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Benoit Jacob <jacob.benoit.1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> Right now we are fishing some rather big fish who have uninformed
>>>>> concerns about the LGPL licence. So I thought that I'd rewrite the
>>>>
>>>> Let's hope your fishing skills are one of the best :)
>>>>> corresponding FAQ in a very redundant way, so that everyone find what
>>>>> he's looking for. So now, there's
>>>>>  - general questions on the LGPL
>>>>>  - specific questions for proprietary software
>>>>>  - specific questions for BSD-licensed software
>>>>>
>>>>> It's here:
>>>>> http://eigen.tuxfamily.org/index.php?title=Licensing_FAQ
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm interested to know if you disagree or if you can correct my English...
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Benoit, from the amateur legal department
>>>>>
>>
>> You've already got us on your web page (Yujin Robot), but as an aside,
>> had an interesting development some 3-4months ago with regards to
>> eigen.
>>
>> We were partnering with a much bigger company to develop a product and
>> I've been using Eigen to drive the mathematics under the hood for
>> quite some time when all of a sudden their legal team wanted to know
>> all the specifics about what we're using.
>>
>> I've been careful about our code practices, making sure we never
>> copy/paste/modify code and pushing for upstream changes when needed so
>> we should never get in trouble, but Eigen turned into a veritable
>> volcano within the space of a week. It was quite amusing watching
>> events unfold. First email from their lawyers after we sent them a
>> list of BSD/LGPL'd libraries we were using, and within the space of
>> two sentences, (quoting) 'we will not support anything to do with
>> those anti-patent fundamentalists.'
>>
>> And I found myself a little confused about exactly who was the
>> fundamentalist... :P
>>
>> Anyway, turned out their legalese had adopted a blanket rule approach
>> to LGPL3 in particular. The company had been in trouble with licensing
>> before, mostly due to ignorance...and had adopted blanket policies
>> that kept in line with their naivety.
>>
>> In the end, our project would have required a major overhaul and
>> rescheduling at that point and our managers as well as theirs
>> convinced their legalese that their poliical motivations towards GNU
>> were not as important  as project schedules and budgets.
>>
>> Anyway, Im happy say we're still enjoying eigen. My company even let
>> me open up our control library which is starting to get some of the
>> eigen stuff ported across to it (
>> http://snorriheim.dnsdojo.com/redmine/wiki/ecl ).
>>
>> Oh, and we're also using it in tandem with RoS as we start to plan our
>> new platforms.
>>
>> Congratulations on the job by the way!
>>
>> Regards,
>> Daniel Stonier.
>>
>> PS: I suspect some companies may be hesitant to use LGPLV3's as it has
>> not been out in the wild for too long yet. Especially the older, more
>> conservative companies who are missing the boat and concept behind
>> open source and are still clinging to old paranoia's.
>>
>> --
>> Phone : +82-10-5400-3296 (010-5400-3296)
>> Home: http://snorriheim.dnsdojo.com/
>> Yujin Robot: http://www.yujinrobot.com/
>> Embedded Control Libraries: http://snorriheim.dnsdojo.com/redmine/wiki/ecl
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> ricard
> http://www.ricardmarxer.com
> http://www.caligraft.com
>
>
>