channel for quantumInfo

Stream: general

[Alex Meiburg]

There's several people interested in contributing to the quantumInfo project and basically all has happened over DMs on different platforms, could we possibly get a channel for it?

[Shreyas Srinivas]

Awesome. I was just reinventing discrete distributions and entropy for a different project

[Shreyas Srinivas]

May I use your repository as a dependency?

[Shreyas Srinivas]

Specifically I am interested in the material inside the ClassicalInfo directory

[Alex Meiburg]

Absolutely :) And generally, any classical information theory would be welcome to upstream

[Alex Meiburg]

(I don't keep it sorry-free nor do I aim to any time soon, just fyi)

[Martin Dvořák]

Shreyas Srinivas said:

May I use your repository as a dependency?

Isn't the answer always yes?

[Martin Dvořák]

I don't understand law; I just always thought that a license is needed if somebody wants to copypaste a part of a project, not when somebody wants to import it. Please clarify if I am wrong.

[Markus Himmel]

It's not that simple. If a program links against a library, then the program is possibly considered a derivative work of the library and in any case is a work that "uses the library". So for example if the library is released under a copyleft license like the GPL, then that puts restrictions on programs that link to it: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#LinkingWithGPL. This is exactly what sets the GPL apart from the LGPL. Of course, the MIT license contains no such restrictions.

[Alex Meiburg]

There are even some projects that are open source, but cost money to use. That might sound silly because "what's to stop them from just building it from source themselves", and sure they can, but this can be a viable business model if you expect your customers to be high-honesty anyway (either intrinsically, or because they're subject to significant scrutiny and audits).

[Frédéric Dupuis]

I just created a "Quantum information" channel; feel free to join!

[Shreyas Srinivas]

Martin Dvořák said:

Shreyas Srinivas said:

May I use your repository as a dependency?

Isn't the answer always yes?

In addition to what Markus says, it is both courteous and pragmatic to ask where possible