Re: Octave - instrument control option

[Juan Pablo Carbajal]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2012 at 11:33 AM, Julien Salort <address@hidden> wrote:
> Le 26 juin 2012 à 11:24, Jacob Dawid a écrit :
>
>> Julien,
>>
>> for legal issues please consider asking the fsf/a lawyer.
>>
>> However, probably we could work on getting rid of the dependencies on
>> proprietary software in your code.
>
> It's true that we could use libgpib instead of NI-488.2.
> I'm unsure what would be the equivalent of NI-VISA.
>
> There are other legal questions that are not GPL related:
> - I've written support for the various instruments that I use (eg. Keithley 
> 2000, Agilent 34970A, ...).
> I don't know if these manufacturers allow third-parties to distribute 
> "drivers" for those instruments.
> - Additionnally, I have only implemented a subset of their functions 
> (depending on my personnal needs).
> Is this a problem ?
> - And finally, what if a bug in my code leads to some accident in some place ?
> (eg. someone who would use this code to control some piece of equipment and a 
> bug leads to something bad on this costy equipment or the people around. 
> Would I be legally responsible ?)
>
> Julien

Hi,

Regarding your second question, read 15. and 16. of the GPLv3 (and 17.)
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html


-- 
M. Sc. Juan Pablo Carbajal
-----
PhD Student
University of Zürich
http://ailab.ifi.uzh.ch/carbajal/