[Cdk-devel] Wild idea: a GPL module?

[Joerg W. <we...@in...>]

Hi all,

> I've been pondering about writing a Gasteiger charges calculator, which
> I would like to use for a Jmol plugin.
> But JOELib already has a Gasteiger plugin... so why rewrite it? Without
> the expert systems under CDK you will get problems anyway.
> But with getting CDK a full blown library I was also thinking about a
> native
> 1. an implementation from scratch (i.e. article)
> 2. a GPL port of Joerg's implementation (maybe of OELibs C++
> implementation)
> to CDK...

1. I've thought of it rewritting JOELib to JOELib2 (only for design
purpose), but i've decided to do not. I've too much to do with students
and project work, so i'm too busy to have time for such extensive
refactorings. And what's the benefit, i've all functionality i need. Of
course JOELib is hard to maintain and complex, but this works for me and
for all of my students which tries to develop new algorithms.
Eventually in the future there will time for such things. The design will
not easy, but i think there is definitely room for an easier structure,
which means not that it will get more simple, the opposite is the case. An
easier interface will cause an even more complex internal structure if we
are interested in speed also. 

2. So, yes, you can use JOELib, but a simple 'GPL partial charge port' is
not possible without using also the expert systems.
If you use the calculation algorithm you will need also JOELib's chemistry
kernel. So you will need JOELib as complete library and here we face the
licensing problems as already heavily and often discussed on the Openbabel
mailing list, so please refer to GPL FAQ and Openbabel mailing list for
this topic. You can also send a request to the JOELib mailing list, but i
will copy the answers from the FAQ and the Openbabel mailing lists to use
them to answer this question.
So hiding GPL dependency in a (static) library is not possible, thats GPL
and its the hardest license i know. As already said, i tried to get
another one from EyesOpen, but these guys are completely right. They have
developed the kernel and they have a commercial product, so ... if you
have commercial interests USE OEChem from EyesOpen, which costs 20000$US.
They earn it ... that commercial users buy their software ... and you
will get also support from them !


Kind regards, Joerg

Dipl. Chem. Joerg K. Wegner
Center of Bioinformatics Tuebingen (ZBIT)
Department of Computer Architecture
Univ. Tuebingen, Sand 1, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany
Phone: (+49/0) 7071 29 78970
Fax: (+49/0) 7071 29 5091
E-Mail: mailto:we...@in...
WWW:    http://www-ra.informatik.uni-tuebingen.de
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