[Dune] Question about Dune-alugrid license

[Christian Engwer]

Dear Christoph,

> As we presented at the User Meeting in september, we want to use DUNE in proprietary software.
> As indicated on the website, “the DUNE library and headers are licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License, with a special exception for linking and compiling against DUNE, the so-called "runtime exception" ”, which matches well our needs.

This is true. But as you realized below this only holds true for the
"core modules".

> However we have realized that it seems to do not concern all the modules. For instance the Dune-alugrid module is licensed under the GNU GPL without the exception, as can be seen in the COPYING file. This will prevent us for using this module if I understand well.
> Do you confirm this information ?

dune-alugrid is not a core module and is free to choose it's own
license. As the code of the underlying alugrid library was already GPL
before Dune started, that part had to stick with this license. This is
also one of the reasons that dune-alugrid can not be part of the
dune-grid module.

There is an alternative you might consider. In dune-grid we also
provide ug bindings. The underlying ug grid manager is distributed
under the LGPL license. As it is a real lib and not a C++ library this
should fit your needs. The C++ dune bindings are part of dune-grid and
available under GPL+"runtime exception".

Ciao
Christian