Re: low level I/O (GPIB, USBTMC, VXI11)

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 24 November 2012 03:33, Julien Salort <address@hidden> wrote:
> It is my understanding you can link with whatever you want for your personal 
> usage.
> However, DISTRIBUTING a binary that links with NI VISA definitely violates 
> the GPL.
> That is why I don't distribute binaries, only source code.

I've never been clear if this is really ok, but it seems to be a
common interpretation. It seems to be, for example, how nvidia gets
around Linux's copyleft and the nvidia blob.

Richard, can you comment on this? A number of Octave users create oct
files to talk to non-free libraries for external hardware. An oct file
is basically a C++ program that uses Octave's headers and links to
Octave. It is my understanding that these oct files are also linking
to non-free libraries. I am uncomfortable that people do this and
distribute the results. What do you think?

- Jordi G. H.