Re: Quick Question about GNU Octave using

[Brad]

On Jul 9, 2018, at 20:05, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:

On Jul 9, 2018, at 16:37, Brad <address@hidden> wrote:

On Jul 9, 2018, at 14:42, Mike Miller <address@hidden> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 17:11:15 +0100, Ian McCallion wrote:

Surely Octave is merely providing APIs (like android or any other operating

system does) and the product is simply a (maybe paid-for) proprietary app.

If an application uses Octave's APIs, then that application is a derived

work of Octave and must be distributed under the same GPLv3 terms as

Octave itself.

--

mike

 

I don’t think that is a good way to put it. That makes it sound like user programs in Octave must be licensed under GPL restrictions.

Mike is accurate, but could be interpreted incorrectly.

If an application uses Octave's APIs, then that application is a derived work of Octave. If the application is distributed, it must be distributed under the same  GPLv3 terms as Octave itself.

If the application is not distributed, then (afaik) the GPL terms do not apply.

Ben

Can you be concrete in your example of API, if I write an .m file called with

x = rand(20, 1);

printf(‘%f" , mean(x));

And distribute this, (of course a toy program) as an application is it now restricted by the GPL?

Or do you mean things that link against Octave shared objects. Because the former contradicts what we saw with Google vs Oracle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_America,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.) and how we currently coexist with Matlab.

I come from a background in which my understanding of API is more general than perhaps more traditional schools of thought.

Cheers,

Brad Kennedy