Re: calling octave from C

[Jaroslav Hajek]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Judd Storrs <address@hidden> wrote:

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:58 PM, Jaroslav Hajek <address@hidden> wrote:
> No, surely not. The m-file is just being passed through, it doesn't "know"
> anything about the bindings.

I'm not sure what you mean by "know" and really what that has to do
with the GPL.

It's clear, isn't it? The Python script uses calls to Pytave functions. The Octave script doesn't.
Octave is being embedded, but the Octave scripts are unchanged.

Both interpreters are combined to the same executable--you have a
black box with two streams of input data. On the one side you have the
octave interpreter reading m-files. On the other side you have the
python interpreter reading python files. My question is how
specifically you can distinguish between the two streams such that
different licensing conditions are applied to the two streams. If you
can't explain why one stream is different from the other, you can't
have it both ways. It's all or nothing.

w.r.t. Pytave, they are clearly distinguishable; one calls Pytave, the other doesn't.

Of course, we should ask: what happens if Pytave becomes an integral part of Python? 
Let's bundle Python, Octave and Pytave together, and call the result PythonOctave. Both licenses (GPL and Python) allow us to do that. The result will be GPL, of course, but now, using pytave really doesn't differ from using any other built-in module. And the FSF's FAQ states that licensing doesn't apply to plain scripts, just scripts using bindings.
So it appears that it depends whether you treat the software bundle as three products or just one.
That's why I suggested you ask FSF directly, and perhaps show the some arguments in this discussion.

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