[mesa-users] Bug: multiple versions of the MESA manifesto

[Sergio Gelato]

	"Good grief --- now we need a mesa intellectual property lawyer!"
		-- Bill Paxton, 2014-08-27

I'm not a lawyer, only someone who reads software licenses. I just noticed that
there are at least two versions of the MESA manifesto. The one on the web site
(at http://mesa.sourceforge.net/assets/mesa_manifesto.pdf), though undated,
appears to be newer than the one in the mesa-r7184.zip bundle and at the head
of the SVN trunk (dated April 29, 2010).

This creates a problem when interpreting copyright/license statements in the
source files as added by r2307.

1) Are we allowed to distribute MESA (e.g., to our students) or not?
2) Is user identification required ("release to a user is contingent
upon [...]") or only requested [but optional]?

Please clarify. We'd like to use MESA but the wording of the bundled version
of the manifesto is holding us back.

I find the changes in r2307 unfortunate in another respect: it sounds like
you've added additional restrictions on top of the GNU LGPL. I suppose the
copyright holder can do that, but the result is different from the LGPL
(and may be incompatible with the GPL, which covers components like GYRE).
If the intent is to modify the LGPL, I think one should give it a new
name to avoid misunderstandings. If on the other hand the manifesto is
intended to be morally but not legally binding, a wording that doesn't
put it on equal footing with the license may be more appropriate.