Re: MSVC runtime library license problem

[John W. Eaton]

On 23-Jan-2007, Trond Varslot wrote:

| There is an accessible discussion of these issues on the following page:
| 
| http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs
| 
| Basically, linking to non-free libraries is allowed (presuming the 
| library lisence does not prohibit this of course).

If you follow the link in that section of the FAQ to this one:

  http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs

you'll also find a discussion about when it is OK -- the library is
part of the OS, or you add a special exception to the terms for your
program (which we have not done for Octave).  So I don't think it is
fair to say that "linking to non-free libraries is allowed".  If that
were always true, then what is the point of the GPL?

jwe