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Hacked gnuplot/win32 binaries NOT AVAILABLE ANY MORE
From: |
John W. Eaton |
Subject: |
Hacked gnuplot/win32 binaries NOT AVAILABLE ANY MORE |
Date: |
Thu, 10 Jul 1997 15:14:12 -0500 |
On 10-Jul-1997, Mumit Khan <address@hidden> wrote:
| Re-reading the copyright statement, it seems that distributing even source
| patch is NOT ok.
| Now that I know that the "gnu" in "gnuplot" was just accidental, and
| not what it seems (I know that everybody else knew this, but I've never
| had to use gnuplot since I have access to other packages, so never knew),
| I'm a bit concerned about octave's dependence on gnuplot for graphics.
I believe it is ok to distribute a patch but not a complete modified
distribution. The Copyright file that is distributed with gnuplot
says:
* Copyright (C) 1986 - 1993 Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley
*
* Permission to use, copy, and distribute this software and its
* documentation for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted,
* provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and
* that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear
* in supporting documentation.
*
* Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to
* distribute the modified code. Modifications are to be distributed
* as patches to released version.
*
* This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
Having to distribute patches is somewhat inconvenient. I would
definitely prefer to see gnuplot distributed under less restrictive
terms. I originally decided to use gnuplot because it was reasonably
easy to adapt it for my purposes and I was already using it for other
things. Now I think there are probably better alternatives, but it is
a lot of work to switch.
My long term plans are still to create a relatively generic interface
to plotting that Octave will use internally and that will make it
easier for people to adapt whatever plotting package they prefer.
Unfortunately, it may be a while before that actually happens.
jwe