octave-maintainers
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Re-distributing Octave built with Intel Compilers?


From: edmund ronald
Subject: Re: Re-distributing Octave built with Intel Compilers?
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2016 02:44:52 +0200

Mike, 

 The open source movement's success in large part due to the GPL which gives the user RIGHTS. The right to obtain source, to modify, to redistribute. 

 In a world where everything mostly is dynamically linked to everything else, spreading the idea that linking to a library violates the GPL opens a really nasty can of worms. essentially it would mean that free software cannot run on a machine with any non-free software, including the BIOS.


On Sat, Jul 23, 2016 at 12:02 AM, Mike Miller <address@hidden> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 21:41:25 +0200, edmund ronald wrote:
> Mike -
>
>  This is no matter for joking. You have agreed to license your code
> according to the GPL. At this point if Jeff as a licensee needs to have
> confidence that as long as he adheres to the GPL none of the authors will
> "object". There are zillions of computers and devices out there which are
> based on proprietary compilers, and if the license gets put in doubt in
> this way then the free software movement will grind to a halt.

I hope it didn't read like I was joking, my intent was to be serious and
helpful and not leave Jeff hanging for an answer. As one of hundreds of
contributors and copyright holders to the Octave code base, however, I
can only offer my own opinion.

If the question was whether Octave could be linked with libfoo that does
some new feature, the answer seems to me to be blatantly no.

But as a developer, not a lawyer, I do not have enough legal knowledge
to say whether the libraries provided with the Intel compiler fall under
the system library clause in this case.

I would prefer that the system library clause only cover uses that link
with a completely freely specified library ABI that the user can swap
out for another one, such as libc, libm, BLAS, LAPACK, etc. But that is
a technical answer, not a legal answer, and probably not the right
answer.

Jeff should probably specify (to us and/or to the experts) exactly which
of Intel's libraries the distribution in question would include and link
with: OpenMP, MKL, IPP, etc.

Thanks,

--
mike


reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]