Re: matlab2tikz and dual BSD/GPL licensing

[John W. Eaton]

On 15-Dec-2010, bpabbott wrote:

| If we decided to include a derivative of this function in Octave's
| core then I think we'd want to branch the development. I don't think
| this would be a big deal since the coding standards for Octave would
| require a rewrite anyway (only minor changes are needed to run
| matlab2tikz).
| 
| Personally, I'd like to add this function to Octave's core. This
| would allow for consistent TikZ output for the gnuplot and OpenGL
| backends. If that were done, the Octave version would be GPLv3 and
| would include Nico's name as author and copyright holder. The
| maintenance and development could then continue under Octave.

Is the software you want to use actively maintained?  If so, then I
don't think it makes sense for us to fork development.  We have other
files that don't follow our coding guidelines (gl2ps.c, for example)
that we simply import int our source tree.  If we need to change
gl2ps.c, we would first attempt to get changes accepted by the gl2ps
developers.  Only if that failed would we think about maintaining our
own modified version.

So I think it makes sense to use the external code with as few changes
as possible.  But if we do need some changes, then we should consider
maintaining them as patches, or minimizing them in some way.
Otherwise, we end up making a lot of work for ourselves if we want to
try to follow the changes that are happening in the main development
branch.

But if this package is not actively developed and it is unlikely that
it will be in the future, then it might make sense for us to take on
the job of maintaining it.

jwe