Re: GPU Engine for Octave

[Judd Storrs]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 3:53 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On  8-Dec-2009, Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
> | "halfway working" would surely not be enough, but otherwise this seems
> | allowed if the standard satisfies the GPL demands.
>
> Yes, I agree.  My point is just that some care needs to be taken when
> evaluating whether a given case is OK or not.

I agree with this, but the GPL is a little murky here. I think the
intent is to allow a proprietary library to substitute for an existing
free-library if and only if the GPL-covered program and the library
only interact via the "standard interface". There is maybe an
ambiguity in determining what the requirements of the publicly
available version are. i.e. does "available to the public" mean
GPL-compatible? From GPLv3 section 1:

The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other
than the work as a whole, that ... (b) serves ... to implement a
Standard Interface for which an implementation is available to the
public in source code form.

The ambiguity is what does "available in source code" form entail? The
bare minimum would be code that you are allowed to read. Are they
releasing the publicly available version of the library from full
GPL-compatibility? Or even from being free-software at all?


--judd