Re: Private company and code salvation

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 2:21 PM, David Bateman
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Jaroslav Hajek wrote:
>>>
>>> To me the question is not one of whether a company would finance such an
>>> API. Given that the Octave community would accept such an API, which is
>>> still not certain,
>>>
>>
>> maybe, but I don't see why we should object...
>>
>
> Acceptance is subject to the degree to which community members believe the
> GPL should be the license to all software. However, the harder question is
> "how can you have an LGPL, or other license, to a set of libraries using the
> GPL?" and in particular given that the code has existed for a long time, we
> can't realistically modify in anyway the Octave license. So we need to
> figure out a legitimate means of having this API/ABI to Octave. As I said
> the mex interface is one such as writing code for such an interface means
> that the code is not specifically for Octave.
>
>
>>> Someone has to go and ask for it, and give good reasons why giving that
>>> money to the open source project is good for the company doing it.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, precisely. In fact, once a company realises that they would
>> benefit from using Octave (say, instead of Matlab), and that the only
>> obstacle is the missing LGPL API, it will probably be clear to them
>> that investing money to get that last obstacle removed is a good idea.
>> On the other hand, if the LGPL API is already there, they will just
>> use it.
>>
>
> The idea of a paid support company is not the write code on request as such,
> but to supply on call support for when companies have an issue to address.
> This can give a company the confidence to use Octave as they know that there
> is some one, somewhere that they have paid that will address any questions,
> issues or bugs that they have.. This is not a small issue in getting many
> companies to accept a particular piece of software to be part of their tool
> chain. So the existence of the API makes that paid support position easier.
>
> Hey, if can also get someone to pay for it to be written then why not.
>

OK :) I just don't think that the LGPL-usable API as a kind of feature
that would itself attract commercial users. Once they become
interested
in Octave, it is going to be born out of necessity, but meanwhile, we
need other stuff. I mean, if that API was really missing, we should
have
had a bunch of commercial users developing via m-files and MEX API and
crying for OCT API that they could use... Well, maybe we do, but it is
my impression that we don't. It seems to me that using free software
in most commercial companies works from down to top, i.e. starts with
individual professionals. And they usually don't even think about
licensing issues until they need to deploy something. At that moment,
they are going to need the LGPL API, but either they're already
attracted or they will never get to that moment.

>> I don't understand the laws much, but IMHO a company based in Europe
>> would be in less danger as most Mathworks patents seem to be US only
>> and in general laws in EU are more strict about software patents.
>>
>
> So you cut off any possibility of generating a profit in the US market, as
> doing business in a country makes you subject to their laws. There goes
> John's job at such a company :-)
>
> Cheers
> D.
>
>
> --
> David Bateman                                address@hidden
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>



-- 
RNDr. Jaroslav Hajek
computing expert
Aeronautical Research and Test Institute (VZLU)
Prague, Czech Republic
url: www.highegg.matfyz.cz