Re: gnuplot, ignore if tired of thread

[Daniel Heiserer]

> >MAYBE if most of the developers, and MANY enduser's
> >especially other software projects like octave who use
> >and NEED gnuplot ask him multiple times VERY POLITE
> >he might change his mind.
> >So let me know if there are enough volunteers to write some
> >polite mails with good arguments for a few weeks
> >(to get a free license is not free ;-)).
> 
> []
> 
> >
> >I would like to have another copyright for gnuplot of course,
> >but is it REALLY necessary?
> 
> No, it's not, really, because gnuplot will become slowly irrelevant
> over the next several years.  But, under a better license (GPL),
> gnuplot could be easily extended.  I already mentioned embedding
> in GTK or QT widgets.  Another area for improvement would be
> libreadline and libhistory linking, which would vastly improve
> the cli.  And it would be very inconvenient to rewrite several
> years of plotting scripts if gnuplot eventually dies.

I think gnuplot is not state of the art, but there are so many things
inside which can be used extremely efficent (lots of terminals).
Maybe gnuplot comes with a "libgnuplot.so" in the future,
so the things you don't want to recode can be used.
Anyway for plotting I think it can easily be extended to be 
something which is very useful.

> For those that are still following this thread, this horse isn't
> dead yet.  With a license change and a bit more developer interest,
> gnuplot could start to evolve into a tecplot style app, which is
> sorely lacking in the linux world.  If tecplot were cheaper, I would
> just buy it and be done with it.  Part of the reason I am still
> beating it (the horse) is that I am not currently using octave.
> I have to use matlab + guide, which makes me unhappy.  octave users

so do I. I can use octave only for limited things. Especially when it 
comes to plotting/graphics I have to switch to matlab. Many
incompatiblities between matlab and octave make my live really hard.
I couldn't leave matlab because of functionality lack in
octave-plotting.
I could leave octave, but that would be really sad.

> are a natural and potentially huge user base for gnuplot.  It would
> truly be sad if the gnuplot community decides to keep the status quo.
> 
> So, count me in for some emailing.  I have lots of good arguments
> for why gnuplot would benefit from GPL licensing.

I will wait till next week for other "maling-volunteers". If nobody else
is interested I will try by my own and let you know how the things
are going and give you the mail-adresses.
How many people are in this list?
100?
If more ask for it that will emphasize the GPL/BSD argument for gnuplot
a lot. If I am (and maybe you) are the only ones, the effect will be low
and I wasted another 2 weeks .....

> 
> Thanks for your efforts Daniel.
:-)
> 
> Dave Doolin
daniel

-- 
Mit freundlichen Gruessen
                                 Daniel Heiserer
-----
--------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl.-Phys. Daniel Heiserer, BMW AG, Knorrstrasse 147, 80788 Muenchen
Abteilung EK-20
Tel.: 089-382-21187, Fax.: 089-382-42820
mailto:address@hidden



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