Re: Xoctave - Human interface to GNU Octave

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 9:48 AM, Carlo de Falco<address@hidden> wrote:
> 2009/6/23 John W. Eaton <address@hidden>:
>> On 22-Jun-2009, MMA Bicak wrote:
>>
>> | Please check it out new GUI for Octave. It's free for personal use.
>>
>> I only see binaries for Windows systems.
>>
>> Is it free software in the sense of
>> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html?
>>
>> jwe
>
>
> According to the "license" page on the website it seems not:
>
> -----------------------------------
> Human Readable License of Xoctave
> For detailed license information please read following License section.
>
> You are free:
>
> to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
> to Remix — to adapt the work
> Under the following conditions:
>
> Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by
> the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they
> endorse you or your use of the work).
>
> What does "Attribute this work" mean?
> The page you came from contained embedded licensing metadata,
> including how the creator wishes to be attributed for re-use. You can
> use the HTML here to cite the work. Doing so will also include
> metadata on your page so that others can find the original work as
> well.
> Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
>
> -----------------------------------
>
> I am dubious about the "attribution" clause but, even though IANAL, I
> am quite sure that the non-commercial clause is incompatible with GPL.
> c.


This is one of Creative Commons licenses, namely CC-BY-NC. According
to FSF, only CC-BY and CC-BY-SA are free, and neither of those (in v.
2.0) is GPL compatible.
The question here is whether Xoctave constitutes a derivative work.
The homepage says Octave is encapsulated using pipes, which is
probably OK (not a derivative work).

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