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Re: GSL and ALGLIB
- From: Brian Gough <bjg at gnu dot org>
- To: Sergey Bochkanov <sergey dot bochkanov at alglib dot net>
- Cc: gsl-discuss at sourceware dot org
- Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:58:38 +0100
- Subject: Re: GSL and ALGLIB
- References: <758802574.20100413142051@alglib.net>
At Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:20:51 +0400,
Sergey Bochkanov wrote:
> What do GSL developers think about using source code from ALGLIB in
> GSL?
>
> ALGLIB is an open source numerical analysis library distributed under
> GPL 2+. It uses automatic translation from specially designed
> pseudocode to provide same functionality in C++, C#, FreePascal and
> other programming languages. Project aims to be highly portable,
> compiler- and OS-independent. It is actively developed (new releases
> each month).
>
> ALGLIB contains many interesting algorithms which are missing in GSL.
>
> For example, it includes:
> * limited memory BFGS optimizer
> * improved Levenberg-Marquardt optimizer
> * bound constrained optimizer
> * 2-dimensional interpolation (bilinear/bicubic splines)
> * scattered N-dimensional interpolation/fitting with linearithmic
> complexity.
>
> It should be easy to write GSL-ish wrapper for ALGLIB. I can help if
> someone wants to implement it. However it is unclear what is GSL devs
> position on using external libraries. I've read past discussions on
> FLAME and FFTW, but there was no decision.
Hello Sergey
Thanks for your email. There are two concerns here, licensing and
technical.
Regarding licensing, I think we corresponded about ALGLIB a couple of
years ago and I asked if the underlying converter was free software
(which it was not at that time). The GPL defines source code as "the
preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" -- which in
this case is the underlying algorithm definitions for the converter,
not the individual routines. We could only consider using other code
if all the associated software (and documentation) is free.
Whether it makes sense techically to use ALGLIB in GSL, it is
difficult for me to comment without the converter being free software
and available to study.
I do think the principle of converting to different languages from a
common source is a good one and would encourage you to consider
releasing everything under a free software license, whether or not we
might use parts of it.
--
best regards
Brian Gough
GNU Scientific Library -
http://www.gnu.org/software/gsl/