ScanPy's BSD license and GPLed dependencies

[PertuyF]

Hello there,

Thank you for the great work you're doing building ScanPy!

I am currently learning about open-source licenses and the intricacies of copyright. Especially regarding management of GPL dependencies and when the viral copyleft clause is triggerred or not.
It looks like the ScanPy team explored this question already as the projet is licensed under BSD while it is leveraging GPLed dependencies like leidenalg, python-igraph or louvain.

Understanding how you handled this question would greatly help me, could you tell me?
Maybe there are discussions recorded somewhere?

Best,
Fabien

[flying-sheep]

Hi! Coincidentally, we (scverse) are currently looking to speak with a lawyer about this because we want to make sure everyone can use scanpy and friends without problem.

From my understanding, code at rest can be licensed however the authors want. Running that code in a certain context can result in the GPL’s license terms being applied. E.g. if a company distributes a product that contains a GPL library, customers of that product can ask the company for the source code of everything.

As said, this is my understanding, and I’m not a lawyer. Note also that nothing about the above is specific to scanpy: Companies selling a product containing open source software always have to be aware of this. And that’s why we want to ask a corporate lawyer about what guarantees we should provide for companies and how we can do that.

I hope that helps!