Re: Thoughts about gnuplot license and copyrights

[Ethan A M. <merritt@u.washington.edu>]

On Thursday 19 January 2006 07:14 am, Dave Denholm wrote:
> It may prevent the gnuplot terminal drivers from being
> distributed with another program. (Maybe not : it says you cannot
> distribute complete modified source tree, but doesn't see you cannot
> distribute a partial set of unmodified sources..?)

If it is a new driver, such as Timoth=E9e's wxWidgets driver,
then it is separated from the gnuplot core code by a
published API (in term_api.h and term/README). Furthermore, the
author can choose to make it available under multiple licenses.
=20
> I was going to say that even if we can no longer make releases,
> there's always the CVS that people can download the source
> from. However, looking at the copyright again, could it be said that
> having the CVS available on the internet is a violation of
>=20
>  * Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to
>  * distribute the complete modified source code.

Actually, I believe that distribution by CVS is exactly in line
with that requirement. A CVS server, internally, is in fact a large
set of sequential patches applied to a base version.  That is what
lets you back-track to any previous date's version.  The fact that
the server is capable of applying the patches for you on the server
side, as well as handing you the base code and the separate patches,
is a matter of convenience rather than substance.  =20


=2D-=20
Ethan A Merritt
Biomolecular Structure Center
University of Washington, Seattle 98195-7742