Re: Who uses Octave?

[Ron.Simonson]

Julien Salort wrote:
> "John W. Eaton" <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > I think we all understand that the GPL clearly forbids distributing the
> > resulting binaries.
>
> I think  I understood this. I  still wondered if I  could distribute the
> source code and Makefile.
>
> > If your intent is to attempt to avoid the terms of the GPL simply by
> > releasing a thin wrapper between Octave and a proprietary library,
>
> I  personnaly   don't  attempt  anything.   I  don't   plan  on  selling
> anything. If  distributing my  source code poses  a legal issue,  then I
> just won't distribute it or try to switch to Matlab but this may require
> some work and I'm not sure to have the time.
>
> > You may think you are helping people by releasing this code, but I
> > would urge to you not do it and instead work to provide free software
> > drivers for the hardware.
>
> I do scientific research. To do this, I choose the acquisition card with
> the required datasheet. It  happens that National Instruments provides a
> free closed-source cross-platform library  to interface this card with a
> computer.
>
> I don't have  the knowledge nor the time  to reverse-engineer their card
> and write my own driver. End of story.

Is there any problem with Julien sending his source/makefiles so that
we can look at it to see how difficult it will be to substitute
GPIBLinux or the Comedi libraries?  I do not have loads of free time and
I am not a programmer but I would try and take a look at this.  I use
the old GPIBLinux libraries for GPIB at home so I am not completely
unfamiliar with this kind of thing.

Talk to you later.  Ron.