On Thu, 2014-02-06 at 21:02 +0100, Philip Nienhuis wrote:
To me, "free" is also about freedom to choose what software or
combinations of software to use.
Or would you think are we more free if we are limited to only <fill in
your favorite definition of "free" here> software? *That* would sound
contradictory to me....
I have not followed the discussion, and I do not know the details of
the subject. I could be wrong in what follows.
If you've made an interface between Excel and Octave that only works
with Excel, this is a GPL violation, regardless of my or your opinion of
what "free" means.
If you wrote a generic interface that does not depend on Excel, then
there is no problem.
As to your definition of "free", the GPL forbids certain things, in
order to ensure the freedom of users, just like we must forbid slavery
in order to have a free society. When people use Octave, we want to
guarantee that all of its components are free. This guarantee is
provided by the GPL. If you break this promise by making Octave depend
on Excel, then you are not promoting software freedom. You would then
be promoting Excel.