Re: Clarification about the octave-gpcl licensing conditions

[Rafael Laboissiere]

* Dirk Eddelbuettel <address@hidden> [2006-11-10 21:29]:

> On 10 November 2006 at 23:27, Rafael Laboissiere wrote:
> | I am still a little bit perplex that it is so simple to circumvent the GPL.
> 
> Well, as was pointed out, this may or may not pass scrutiny.

An aside question: has the GPL been already tested in courts?

> | about such things?  Dirk suggested to contact Douglas Bates.  Should I do
> it?
> 
> No, I suggested for John to take things off-list and off-email and to talk
> with Doug, whom he (and I) know personally.  So please don't.

Okay.

> (Re-)licensing is is a tricky question. I like the GPL as it is so much of
> a standard. Yes I also have symapthy for Rafael's point of view with
> respect to the two interesting libraries he mentioned. But John also raises
> important points about desirability and feasibility of changing Octave's
> license. All very tricky indeed.

Thanks for being sympathetic with my position.  I am also a big supporter of
the GPL, but this license is simply inappropriate in some cases. as even
Stallman noticed in his essay.  For instance, I am in real trouble now that
I have distributed the Octave binding for the GPC library in SourceForge, as
it is an infringement of the GPL, apparently.

Furthermore, I have written these two handy bindings for Cubpack++ and CGAL
which are sitting here in my disk drive, but I dare to show this to other
people. This code will die with me, no other person will be able to even see
it.

Can we call this state of affairs "freedom"?

-- 
Rafael