Re: GSOC 2020 Idea Discussion

[John W. Eaton]

I am not a lawyer and I don't plan to engage in an endless argument 
about licensing.  However, I will state the following as my 
understanding of the situation with CUDA (and other) libraries that are 
distributed under terms that are incompatible with the GPL.

To comply with the GPL, the license of anything combined with code 
covered by the GPL must also be compatible with the GPL or covered by 
one of the exceptions to the GPL.

Interface code that is covered by a permissive license doesn't act as an 
"insulator" between code covered by the GPL and some proprietary license 
that is incompatible with the GPL.

GPLv3 defines System Libraries and makes an exception for them, but I 
don't think that NVIDIA's CUDA libraries would be in that category.

jwe