linking pysteps under the GPL3 license about pysteps HOT 6 CLOSED

The GPL is restrictive in the sense that enforces the "open source" idea. That means that, if you use a GPL library in you need to make the source code available also.

An alternative is the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). With that license, applications that use the library don't have to be redistributed under LGPL. That means, you don't need to distribute the surce code if you are only using the library. You only need to do it if you distribute a derived work.

Another license that I personally like is BSD-3. It allows almost unlimited freedom as long as you include the pysteps copyright and a copy of the license when you distribute any derivative work.
BSD-3 is similar to the MIT license, but BSD don't allow to use the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors to endorse or promote products derived from this software without permission.

We need to discuss how "permissive" we want the license to be, and then, choose the license accordingly. I personally prefer permissive licenses.

To serve as a reference, below a list of opensoure package and their respective licenses.

• py-art: Looks like a BSD-3 license.
• pandas: BSD-3
• numpy: Looks like a BSD-3 license.
• xarray: Apache License
• BALTRAD: (LGPL)
• wradlib: MIT license.
• PyRadarMet : GPL
• WRF model: Public domain

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Sorry that I said I would bring this up but didn't, as I was too busy over the past couple of weeks. Thanks @dnerini for taking the initiative.

From the perspective of a potential user, we can happily use it as long as it's not strictly GPL.

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No worries @wcwoo, I decided to open the issue myself as I think it is something important to be discussed here. Thank you for having mentioned this issue in the first place.

And thanks @aperezhortal for the exhaustive overview. From my side this is now pretty clear: if the aim of pysteps is to become a general library for nowcasting purposes and related applications, then GPL is too restrictive as it would limit its use in non-GPL softwares.

This said, I wouldn't know whether we should go for LGPL, BSD or MIT, I guess this also becomes a matter or taste. We could also consider which license is most popular among potential users of pysteps, and this is already nicely illustrated in the list above.

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It looks like we are now converging towards the BSD-3 license.
I will leave this discussion open for the moment, in case somebody has something to add or comment about the topic. We plan to update the pysteps license with the next V1.0.0 release.

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I have no objections to this license change.

In fact, I wholeheartedly agree with switching to BSD-3 license. That'll help out in avoiding licensing problems in the future, if (when) pysteps library is used in operational nowcasting systems.

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Commit 9522198 closes this issue.

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