Re: [OctDev] Re: new release

[Paul K. <pki...@us...>]

On Jan 13, 2006, at 11:12 AM, Stefan van der Walt wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 07:42:27PM -0500, John W. Eaton wrote:
>> On 12-Jan-2006, Paul Kienzle wrote:
>>
>> | Do you just need gcvsplf.f excluded, with a note to download it from
>> | netlib?
>>
>> According to the FSF, "user does the link" still amounts to a
>> violation of the GPL.
>
> Not sure what you are trying to say, but it doesn't make sense to me.
> Octave forge does not build binaries that are illegal to distribute.
> If the user links such binaries and distributes them outside the
> license, then that would be wrong.  But it is perfectly acceptable to
> distribute source code that could be linked to a commercial library
> under the GPL, right?

That has not yet been decided.

If you search for "user does the link" or "indirect infringement"
you get a lot of claims that the FSF believes this to be a violation
of the GPL.  However a google search for either of these terms with
site:www.gnu.org does not produce any hits.

The best I can come up with is the following GPL FAQ:

	http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

which suggests that the license should be interpreted as a matter of
intent rather than of specific technology.  Under this interpretation,
even communication via RFC 1149 - Standard for the transmission of IP
datagrams on avian carriers - between octave and the non-free subroutine
would be a violation.

Even if "user does the link" is legal, I encourage anyone who finds
the algorithm useful to produce an unencumbered version of it.  I
found the sensitivity of the result to the particular choice of
smoothing parameter to be too subjective for my purposes so I have
no desire to do so myself.

- Paul