Re: octave + mkl

[Sergei Steshenko]

----- Original Message -----
> From: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>
> To: Joshua Dillon <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden
> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10:40 PM
> Subject: Re: octave + mkl
> 
> On 16 May 2012 15:12, Joshua Dillon <address@hidden> wrote:
>>  I don't have time to disseminate this information, but it might be
>>  nice to add a howto build octave with MKL support in the FAQ.
> 
> We really don't want to be promoting non-free software in the Octave
> mailing lists or wiki. What is MKL doing that we can't be doing
> instead in ATLAS or OpenBLAS?
> 
> - Jordi G. H.

MKL probably works faster.

If so, end users care much more about performance than about ideology.

End users, as long as they don't distribute Octave, have full right to combine 
free and non-free SW inside their version of Octave (of course, provided 
non-free SW license doesn't prohibit using it with free SW).

It's very good there are people who promote ways to build faster Octave - 
despite your ideological objections.

FWIW, 'ffmpeg' developers are much more tolerant - they explicitly allow in 
'configure' to choose non-free components, they just remind that such a 
'ffmpeg' built with non-free pieces can't be distributed.

Regards,
  Sergei.