Re: proposed FAQ entries about licensing

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 2:03 PM, David Bateman <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>>
>> If you want to take advantage of any GPL-covered software, including
>> Octave, you need to honor the GPL (of course this means legally comply
>> with its terms, but I also think that you shouldn't use it if you
>> disagree with it's spirit). GPL protects free software from being
>> "proprietarized" in the precise sense you (maybe) look for.
>> You can, of course, use any other free software license for your code,
>> that doesn't impose GPL's strict copyleft requirements, but then you
>> can't make your code dependent on Octave, for instance, by using the
>> C++ interface, or by distributing binaries linked against Octave.
>>
>>
>
> In fact MEX binaries can theoretically be used with both Octave and Matlab.
> In practice they can't at the moment but that doesn't change the fact you
> can distribute MEX binaries for Octave under whatever license you want as
> long as you don't distribute them in such a way that Octave and the
> proprietary MEX files become a single product..
>
> Regards
> David
>
>

I'm not sure about Windows, but under Linux even MEX compiled files
contain links to libcruft, liboctave & liboctinterp, which IMHO makes
them derivatives of Octave. The sources can be distributed under any
license, if they don't contain Octave-specific stuff.


-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert & GNU Octave developer
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz