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Re: Is this copyright/license agreement Octave-compatible


From: Josh Rigler
Subject: Re: Is this copyright/license agreement Octave-compatible
Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:34:41 -0700
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.9 (Windows/20071031)

John W. Eaton wrote:
On 16-Nov-2007, Josh Rigler wrote:

|    This software may be copied or redistributed as long as it is
|    not sold for profit, but it can be incorporated into any other
|    substantive product with or without modifications for profit or
|    non-profit. If the software is modified, it must include the
|    following notices:
| | * The software is not the original (for protection of the
|        original author's reputations from any problems introduced
|        by others)
| | * Change history (e.g. date, functionality, etc.) | | This copyright notice must be reproduced on each copy made.
|    This software is provided as is without any express or implied
|    warranties whatsoever.
| | | For the life of me I don't know why they didn't just follow HDF and | NetCDF's lead and write a genuine OSS-compliant license, but it does | seem like it addresses the concerns raised by JWE over six years
| ago.

I don't see that it does, since it clearly states that it can't be
sold for profit, which is incompatible with the GPL.

Thanks for weighing in John.

Just to be clear, the license states that it *can* be sold for profit, with caveats that are, practically speaking, no more restrictive than other software licenses that are widely accepted as GPL compatible (e.g., NetCDF or HDF). However, I do understand that 'practically speaking' and 'legal' are far from synonymous in the real world, and while it might be mildly entertaining to debate the meaning of the phrase 'substantive product' (I would argue that simply repackaging the software with the requested notices inserted qualifies), in the end it all means nothing until the CDF developers choose to weigh in on the topic themselves.

Thanks again to everyone who responded to my original email, but I will probably not pursue this issue any further.

-EJR


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