RE: Gnuplot concerns

[Ray, W. N <wil...@lm...>]

I thank you for your time and effort in your response.  Please
understand these are not my personal problems.  This has all come from
our legal council and we are looking to either justify ourselves to them
or comply with their decisions, so any input is appreciated.

Hans-Bernhard Broeker wrote:

"And what made you think there's more than license, let alone a mismatch

of licenses involved here?

What a directory should have to do with such a legalese issue is 
completely beyond me."

I should have provided a listing of mismatched licenses.  This was
merely told to us by our legal council, I will (and should have)
verified this first before adding this part into the message. 

"Those are, ultimately, impossible requirements.  Among the files you 
listed, there are quite a lot that are generated by other tools we don't

control, and some that simply cannot hold a license or copyright 
statement (graphics, e.g.)."

I believe that the directory the tool was run on was extracted directly
from the source package found on the web.  I can double check that if
there appears to be a discrepancy.  Also, files that are un-editable,
such as image files, etc. have been intentionally excluded.  If in our
ignorance we have failed to exclude some types of un-editable files, any
information as to which file extensions are un-editable that we missed
would be appreciated.

Thank you again for the response, and I sincerely hope we can continue
to use this great software.

Regards,
Bill Ray

-----Original Message-----
From: Hans-Bernhard Broeker [mailto:br...@ph...] 
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 11:04 AM
To: Ray, William N
Cc: gnu...@li...
Subject: Re: Gnuplot concerns

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.  

Congratulations --- you may be the first company ever to try and 
investigate this deeply into the matter.

> 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.

And what made you think there's more than license, let alone a mismatch 
of licenses involved here?

What a directory should have to do with such a legalese issue is 
completely beyond me.

> 2.	There are several files without any licensing information.
[...]
> 3.	There are several files without any copyright.

Those are, ultimately, impossible requirements.  Among the files you 
listed, there are quite a lot that are generated by other tools we don't

control, and some that simply cannot hold a license or copyright 
statement (graphics, e.g.).

(I hope this one makes it through --- I already had one bounce off the 
e-mail address you used).