Re: Octave on Android

[John Swensen]

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 1:13 AM, Corbin Champion <address@hidden> wrote:

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 1:01 PM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:

Could we all please take a deep breath and not escalate things here?

As far as I can tell, Corbin is attempting to comply with the GPL and
is actually doing more than is required.  Before accusing him of
intentionally breaking the license, let's assume that he will fix any
problems if he is made aware of them.

The GPL definitely allows binaries to be distributed only to customers
who pay.  I don't see any significant difference between that and
allowing the binaries to work only if they have been paid for, though
whether this is allowed or not depends on the mechanism used to
prevent the binaries from working.  In any case, I would just
recommend to Corbin that he simply limit distribution to those who
have paid, if that is what he wants to do.  He is under no obligation
to distribute binaries free of charge.

In the context of this discussion, his obligations are:

  * Provide *to the people who have paid for the binaries* the exact
    sources and build system that he used for the binary version that
    he is distributing.  He is not required to provide sources to
    everyone who asks.

  * Allow anyone who receives a copy to redistribute it under the same
    terms (the GPL).  So it is perfectly acceptable for someone to
    take Corbin's binaries and redistribute them, provided that they
    also comply with the terms of the GPL.  If the disabled binaries
    can't be redistributed without the restriction on paying, then
    that is possibly in conflict with the GPL.

Finally, Corbin has clearly done a lot of work on building Octave for
Android.  I don't think there is anything wrong with him getting some
money for that effort.  Similarly, the people who wrote Octave and
various packages have also done a lot of work and some would also like
to receive compensation.  It would be great if Corbin shared something
with the other people who have made Octave on Android possible, but he
is under no legal obligation to do so.

FWIW, this kind of issue has come up for me in the past with the
Octave manual.  One person who has sold it did contribute a (very
small) portion of each sale but others have not.

jwe

JWE,

Thanks for some perspective.  I really am trying.  Tonight, I pushed all the packages related to Octave to the github repository (asked for or not).  I also pushed that one build script there.  There is more that I can do.  If no one is in a huge rush, I would like to document it all as I go through it again.  I can also post a snapshot of all the unmodified code, the next time through, so people can get exactly what I used. 

Thanks,

Corbin  

FWIW, despite now being able to build everything from scratch, I have zero intentions of undercutting you and publishing a donation-free version. I really appreciate you taking the time yesterday to fill in the gaps in our information about how to complete the whole build process, and have no problems with someone asking for a donation to help support an awesome project. It just makes it easier to hack on it later if I want to. For example, I think it would be great to add DropBox of GoogleDrive support to allow running scripts from off of Google Drive (maybe the Android Octave app can already access the Google Drive filesystem?)

I hope you don't think there was too much animosity (though there appeared to be a little bit of it). I think most of us just wanted more details and are grateful for you help.

John