Re: [OctDev] Re: new release

[Quentin S. <qsp...@ie...>]

Paul Kienzle wrote:

>
> 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.


Actually, the original question that brought this up was so much about 
linking GPL and non-GPL code (there are plenty of different licenses in 
octave-forge), but the non-commercial distribution clause. The Fedora 
project does not want any packages that forbid commercial distribution 
because they would cause problems if a 3rd party wanted to burn CDs of 
Fedora and sell them, for example. Then there is the whole separate 
question of what constitutes non-commercial use...

-Quentin