Re: Asking ffor package to be released under GPL compatible licenses

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On Thu, 2014-02-06 at 12:09 -0800, fgnievinski wrote:
> I've taken the liberty of adding a caveat to:
> <http://wiki.octave.org/Asking_for_package_to_be_released_under_GPL:_examples>

I have removed this. It is the goal of the GNU project to promote free
software and the GPL. The Mathworks purged the GPL from Matlab Central
some years ago so that they could add restrictions such as disallowing
the usage of the code outside of Matlab. We want to promote the GPL in
order to ensure that this can't happen again. As it is right now,
Matlab File Exchange is misleadingly distributing software that
appears free but is in fact non-free.

If authors are already happy giving us their software outside of
Matlab File Exchange, then it's not usually onerous for them to allow
it to be GPL'ed. One of Agora's goals is to eventually host the GPL'ed
code that got purged from Matlab Central. That way, we can ensure that
restrictions such as the one that the Mathworks imposed cannot happen
again.

- Jordi G. H.