Re: CUDA acceleration in GNU Octave

[John W. Eaton]

On 22-Nov-2009, Chengqi Chang wrote:

| I think it would be great if someone can provide a "bridge" -- like MPI  
| toolbox(http://atc.ugr.es/javier-bin/mpitb) -- connecting Octave and CUDA  
| computing libraries. Besides, in my opinion, it matters little whether  
| this "bridge" is universal or tied to a single vendor (Nv/ATI). Both of  
| the two choices have merits and drawbacks. If it is tied to a single  
| vendor, it can be easier to take advantage of some special features of the  
| GPU and it also has a larger possibility to get donation from that vendor.

Are the libraries that take advantage of this single vendor
distributed under a license that is compatible with the GPL?

If so, then I think this would be acceptable, but not great as it is
still ties you to a single vendor.

If not, then you would not be able to distribute .oct files that
require these libraries, and such an extension would never become a
part of the core Octave itself.  The Octave project is about software
freedom, not about promoting links to proprietary software, or
encouraging users to lock themselves into single-vendor solutions.

jwe