Re: [OctDev] Octave-forge packaging

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* John W. Eaton <address@hidden> [2005-04-23 10:26]:

> On 23-Apr-2005, Rafael Laboissiere <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> | Indeed, octave-gpc is released under the GNU GPL.  However, octave-gpc
> | links against the General Polygon Clipping Library
> | (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/aig/staff/alan/software/gpc.html), which has a
> | non-free license.
> 
> Doesn't that mean that you can't distribute the result, because the
> whole cannot be distributed under the terms of the GPL?

I am not fully confident on this issue, but I think it works the other
way around: if a library is released under the GPL, then the linked
result *_must_* also be released under the GPL.

I wrote the octave-gpc binding and decided to release it under the GPL.
This means that if one day someone writes a GPLed drop-in replacement for
GPC, then the binding can be used freely.

Notice also that the octave-gpc package in Debian is in the contrib
section, not in main.

-- 
Rafael