Re: Further on MEX

[John W. Eaton]

On  6-Jan-2009, Aravindh Krishnamoorthy wrote:

| Unfortunately, not all buy the argument that source code must be free.
| If by allowing this, we're extending the reach of Octave and at the
| same time ensuring that core parts + toolboxes of Octave don't end up
| being non-free; trouble? (Of course, there's no guarantee that we
| ensure this!!!)
| People I talk to around here (who protect their sources using MEX) do
| not use Octave for the GPL reason. This is a way to push Octave's
| usage to them, now that you've brought it [Octave] in a very good
| shape => from 3.0.x Octave is _so_ much compatible with Matlab.

How does that help us, if they are not willing to share their work
with us?  If they view Octave as a one-way charity project in which
we are giving something to them and they are simply using it without
contributing their work back to us?

| => The MEX file writer links only against libmymex.so which is under LGPL.
| => Octave uses mymex.h which is under LGPL.

But once they are all linked together, the terms of the GPL apply.

jwe