hi there!
I have just downloaded the version of fealpix. here are my thoughts after a few minutes of browsing the sources and an attempt to compile things:
- Boud: you claim the software to be GPL and attach the license. but the software itself is not in the spirit of GNU at all!!! the idea of gnu software is not: look at me, I can handle dozens of lines of code and several equations without a single line of comment! and that is the software you have created - extremelly unclearly coded, uderstanding hardly possible. with such attitude you simply discourage others to use/learn/modify the code. and that is not gnu. you should not release the code in that form and imho it is against gnu philosophy.
- the code is not even comparable to HEALpix in both functionality and documentation
- chosing "fealpix" as a name is not fortunate. it seems as a "negative campaign".
- no docs, no examples, no comments
- could you start using gnu autoconf?
- I find "astropolitics" stuff inlcuded somehow improper. you permanently call HEALpix non-free and claim its authors to blindly follow rules of feudal reality.
- I am very not sure about NR stuff you use and claim that simple rewrite of routines code makes it free. I have compared just one of the files with what can be found in NumericalRecipies and it is IDENTICAL (apart from changing the variables' names and some minor rearragement). you not simply use provided algorithms, you use provided code which is distributed under somehow more restricted license. that is not the way it should be. if all the gnu community acted like that the gnu software would be a patchwork from stolen code. fortunately others are more creative and write original software. you should not distribute those routines in the present form - the code is not yours.
I see all this felapix was intended as a battle for "free software". but the way you fight turns against gnu in fact - by offending people, being extreme radicalist, mixing code and politics, writing unreadable code, stealing code and claiming yours. you should change the way you fight for "free software" because it does not do any good. do the Octave people constantly cry about Matlab beeing non-free???????? or Kaffe and Java?????????? or gcc and icc???? gjc and Java again????????
GNU is about creating BETTER software, not accusing proprietary software of being non-free.
that is my oppinion. at this very moment I feel disappointed with what you do with GNU and GPL philosophy.
regards - michal
BTW: for NR, this is the license you are obliged to follow: If you are the individual owner of a copy of this book and you type one or more of its routines into your computer, we authorize you to use them on that computer for your own personal and noncommercial purposes. You are not authorized to transfer or distribute machine-readable copies to any other person, or to use the routines on more than one machine, or to distribute executable programs containing our routines. This is the only free license.