Re: Gnuplot concerns

[Robert H. <en...@no...>]

On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 14:42 -0500, Ray, William N wrote:

> We currently use the Gnuplot package and we are quite pleased with it,
> but our legal council has recommended that we discontinue its use.  We
> have been advised the following problems need to be addressed before
> we can continue to use the tools Gnuplot provides.

are you using pre-compiled gnuplot binaries? if so, I'd have thought the
copyright method that appears at start up, and the "help license"
command is all you need worry about. Also if you are only using gnuplot
on a specific platform (e.g. windows) then many of the files you list
aren't relevant.

>      1. We need to have no more than 1 license covering files in any
>         one directory.  We have been advised against using software
>         with mismatched licensing.

Can you give specific examples of this problem? I vaguely remember
seeing some files licenses in *more permissive* ways than the standard
license - usually stating public domain - or explicitly dual licensing.
Isn't this quite common in open source software?
 
> There are currently 177 files without copyright information as well as
> 418 files without any licensing information.  Is there any
> possibility 

I am curious how you created this list. Many of the files you refer to
seem to contain the exact same text as the "Copyright" file. e.g. you
list all the terminal drivers as lacking a license, yet virtually all of
them do. In fact, I'm actually struggling to find any files in the
gnuplot source that you haven't listed as lacking a license.

> that this information may be added to the files in the next release?  

Any genuine problems that can be cleaned up should be cleaned up.
However, this could require a great deal of work, and it is most likely
to get done if you do as much of it as possible yourself. Note that this
may well require contacting original authors of individual files, and
seeking their permission.

Rob

-- 
Robert Hart <en...@no...>
University of Nottingham


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