Final Version of Letter


To ng-spice-devel@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it
From Erik de Castro Lopo <erikd@zip.com.au>
Date Sun, 14 May 2000 09:22:58 +0000
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Reply-To ng-spice-devel@ieee.ing.uniroma1.it
Sender erikd@zip.com.au

Hi all,

I think the two week call for comments period regarding this
letter must now be up. Unless I missed any further comments
the letter is as follows.

Ciao,
Erik
---------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli,

We are a voluntary group of engineers/researchers/students who would
like continue development of the electronic simulator Spice. We have 
a web page at :

     http://ieee.ing.uniroma1.it/ngspice/

Although the Spice program you helped to create is no longer being 
supported or actively developed by The University of California at
Berkeley, it remains a standard for electronic circuit design. 
However, over the last decade, several other products (many commercial 
and based originally on Spice) have surpassed it, in speed, 
versatility and up to date process support.

The goal of our project is to start with the last UCB version, Spice3f5, 
and update it to add new features, improve the user interface, improve
the simulation speed and accuracy and improve the compatibility with
other Spice variants. Our aims include making this project free, open 
source software much like the Linux kernel and the GNU utilities.This 
would allow everyone including researchers and students to have access 
to a cheap (free), extensible, electronic simulator.

The problem we have is with the current Spice3f5 license. This license 
is too restrictive to allow it to be used with other free software. The 
problem is that it only allows use for "educational, research and 
non-profit purposes" thereby restricting commercial use. This makes it 
incompatible with free software licenses such as the GNU General Public 
License (GPL). There are two GPL licensed libraries (readline for 
improved command line handling and the GNU Scientific Library) which 
would greatly help our development efforts but which cannot be used 
with Spice3f5 unless the Spice3f5 license is changed. The GNU General 
Pubic License may be viewed here:

    http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

We also note that some have been referring to the Spice license as a BSD
license although this seems not to be the case. There have been a number
of different licenses issued by the University of California, including 
the numerous different BSD licenses, some (but not all) of which are
compatible with the GPL. 

Recently we heard that Dean Hal Varian had convinced the University of 
California, in June 1999, to issue a 'new style' BSD License for the BSD
operating system source code. It is our understanding that this new
style license is GPL compatible and if the Spice3f5 license was changed 
to this one, it would allow us to use Spice3f5 code and code licensed 
under the GPL in the same piece of software while the rights of other 
Spice3 users will remain as they are. Another possibility is to modify 
the current license to allow any use, or alternatively, to allow the the 
Spice3f5 code to be used either under the current license or the GPL as 
the user pleases. Under all of these schemes, the copyright of the 
existing code remains with the University of California and the authors 
of any new code would hold the copyright of their contributions.

Therefore, our question is: would it be possible for you (or rather for 
the University of California, the Spice3f5 copyright holder) to modify 
the license of Spice3f5 in one of the ways mentioned above? Doing so
would allow the creation of a new improved Spice program which would be 
freely available to everyone interested in using it.

We look forward to hearing from you.

With all our regards,
 
The NG-Spice Team
Paolo Nenzi
Michael Widlok
etc.....

http://ieee.ing.uniroma1.it/ngspice


-- 
+-------------------------------------------------+
     Erik de Castro Lopo     erikd@zip.com.au
+-------------------------------------------------+
"... the industrial-capitalist mode of software production 
was doomed to be outcompeted from the moment capitalism 
began to create enough of a wealth surplus for many 
programmers to live in a post-scarcity gift culture."
-- Eric S. Raymond

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