Publish TexGen with commercial software

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

We develop TexGen as GUI and model generator for our own software SwiftComp to compute effective properties of textile composites, and the source codes are available through cdmhub (https://cdmhub.org/resources/texgen4sc/supportingdocs) under GPL. Thank you for providing such a good tool.

Now I have a question regarding to publishing the codes. Currently, all the modified TexGen source codes are in a zip file which are free to download from the link above. If users want to use SwiftComp, they have to request from us and we need to send it separately. Now we want to put SwiftComp executable file in the same zip file with TexGen files, then users just need to download once from just one place. I don't know if this is legitimate since SwiftComp is a commercial software while TexGen is open source code. Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks

======================================
Xin Liu
PhD Candidate, Graduate Research Assistant
Multiscale Structural Mechanics Group
https://cdmhub.org/members/1776
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Xin_Liu221
School of Aeronautics & Astronautics
Purdue University
======================================

[louisepb]

Dear Xin Liu,

Thanks for the enquiry. I am trying to get some advice on this and will get back to you as soon as I can.

Thanks for your patience,
Louise

[louisepb]

Hi Xin Liu,

I have consulted with our team here at Nottingham. As long as any code that you have integrated into the TexGen source code is available as open source then it should be fine to bundle it with SwiftComp without breaching the GPL license (as long as Swiftcomp continues to be a separate executable). They advised, however, that it would be worth consulting your own legal team to ensure that you are covered with respect to your own liability.

It is good to see TexGen being used by a wider circle of users. From the point of view of maintaining the funding for TexGen development it would be good to have feedback from yourselves at some point about known applications or users of the software.

Best wishes,
Louise

[lambert8809]

Hi Louise,

Thank you for your reply. TexGen is very powerful in textile geometry generation which significant reduces the labors in generating textile model. It helps me a lot in my research, and please check the link for our recent accepted paper (Liu, X.; Rouf, K.; Peng, B.; and Yu, W.: "Two-Step Homogenization of Textile Composites Using Mechanics of Structure Genome," Composite Structures, vol. 171, 2017, pp. 252-262.) which takes the advantages of texgen model generation capabilities. The link is https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1UlJWx-7hSjaH

Thanks
Xin