Re: Is this copyright/license agreement Octave-compatible

[Josh Rigler]

Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> On 16/11/2007, Josh Rigler <address@hidden> wrote:
> >    This software may be copied or redistributed as long as it is
> >    not sold for profit,
>
> This is enough to make it (slightly) non-free, certainly GPL
> incompatible and even unsuitable for inclusion with Octave.
>
> It doesn't matter that they allow you to charge for it if you combine
> it with another "substantive" project, whatever the hell that means.
> It adds a restriction the GPL doesn't e.g. someone could want to take
> out this code from Octave and sell it on its own, admittedly a weird
> scenario, but still one that the GPL itself doesn't forbid.
>
> I concur that the best solution is to ask for a relicensing.

I suppose I was inclined to read the entire license, which seemed, as I 
read it, to negate the single line you quoted above.  I also applied my 
own interpretation of the term 'substantive product'.  In retrospect, 
neither of these is probably a very legally sound way to do things.

Seeing as the text provided at the start of this thread constitutes 
their attempt to address issues brought up by JWE over six years ago, 
even after I suggested the NetCDF license to them as a template, and 
even after they received pressure from other scientists in the space 
physics research community (the primary user of CDF software) to change 
their license to something that was GPL compatible, I'm just not willing 
to pursue this any further by requesting (again) a relicensing of the 
CDF software.

Thanks for the feedback.

-EJR