SDSL – Succinct Data Structure Library

by signa11 • 4 years ago

78 13 4 years ago

wrs2• 4 years ago

Note that this has a GPL3 (not LGPL) license. I’m curious about the rationale for doing that with a template-based data structures library. Why would you want to limit adoption so much?

(Edit: realized after typing this that yes, LGPL wouldn’t change anything for a template library. Question remains though.)

lupire• 4 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10158322

1. LGPL doesn't help header code.

2. It not practical to change a license after receiving outside contributions without copyright assignment.

And maybe also 3 they don't have the energy to pursue violators and don't really care.

jltsiren2• 4 years ago

Probably the same reason as with other libraries from the academia. When all free licenses are pretty much equivalent from your point of view, choosing a license is just a bureaucratic formality. The person choosing the license usually doesn't think about the issue too much, and they probably don't have that much experience with licenses anyway.

The currently active fork of SDSL (https://github.com/xxsds/sdsl-lite) has a BSD license. There was supposed to be a team developing the fork, but most people either left the academia or had their research interests move elsewhere. Now there seems to be just a single developer who maintains SDSL as a byproduct of SeqAn.

wrs2• 4 years ago

What surprises me is that I would think the usual goal of an academic project is to make it usable as broadly as possible (indeed, the least restricted licenses originated from universities). And that every institution would have figured out license guidance so it wouldn’t be an accidental choice.

WCSTombs• 4 years ago

The currently active fork of SDSL (https://github.com/xxsds/sdsl-lite) has a BSD license.

How is that legally possible? As I understand, the GPL doesn't allow a derivative work to remove the copyleft provisions from the license.

Or maybe I misunderstood your comment?

Nokinside• 4 years ago

As it seems that there is just one copyright holder, the obvious answer is that it makes buying commercial licenses more likely option.

For a small company or single person who sells code for a living, GPL is a great license as a first option. People can play with the code and use it for software that is GPL compatible. For everything else you must come up with a coin.

ketzu• 4 years ago

Oh wow, seeing this on the front page makes me nostalgic of my bachelor thesis for the creator of SDSL 10 years ago. I remember getting the question "did your resulsts get merged into SDSL?" during the defense and, unfortunately, I had to say no because they weren't useful in the end.

Glad to see Simon seems to be doing well and the project found some attetion!

inciampati• 4 years ago

If you work with impossibly large but mildly compressible data, this library is like a magic book that gives you all the incantations needed to make your objectives achievable on commodity hardware.

ExciteByte• 4 years ago

Here is book on the subject:

https://www.amazon.com/Compact-Data-Structures-Practical-App...

I haven't read the book, so I can't comment on the quality.

SDSL – Succinct Data Structure Library

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