Re: New package

[Oliver Heimlich]

Hi Felix,

On 25.09.2017 23:43, Felix Aparicio Perez wrote:
> I have developed a package-toolbox, called MatPol, made of 65
> Octave-Matlab routines, that can be used to make several matrix
> polynomial computations. Some of the routines make general computations,
> like polynomial matrix inversion or triangularization, and other
> routines make computations that are more specific to multivariate
> time-series analysis (and also useful for signal processing), like
> spectral factorization or computation of echelon canonical forms. The
> routines come with a 100 page manual and examples.

> In fact I wrote the routines several years ago and it is now that I have
> decided to make them available to others.

This sounds very good.  Is it possible to have a look at your package's
source code?

> ...

> I am not considering uploading MatPol to Matlab Central, since the
> license there would have to be a BSD one.
> I think that an external package hosted in Octave Forge could be a good
> solution.

> ...

> 1) LICENSE
> ...
> From all this, since my programs do not contain any dynamically linked
> functions and they are completely written in the scripting language of
> Octave, I understand that I have no restrictions on the kind of license
> for my programs. Is this true?

Before we talk about the other topics that you mention, we should talk
about the license.  Since you only use m-files in your project you may
actually distribute it with any license that you want (like the wiki says).

If you want to host your package on Octave-Forge (which means, the
package can easily be downloaded and installed with Octave's package
manager “pkg”), it is required that you use a free software (a.k.a. open
source) license.  The reason is that we want to ensure continuous
availability of all packages on Octave-Forge for our users and — as the
Octave community — need the legal foundation to maintain, improve, and
distribute the software.

You can pick a license that suits you, for example here:
https://choosealicense.com/licenses/

If you don't want to distribute your package as free software (a.k.a.
open source), we can't do that on Octave-Forge.  However, you may still
distribute your package on your own website (with a proprietary
license), where users can download it manually and install it using “pkg
install yourpackage.tar.gz”.

Best
Oliver