Hello,
My name is Trevor Law and I'm looking to find out whether or not
Octave scripts that I might share must be released under the GPL.
Although I don't need them to be proprietary, the GPL is confusing for
a non-lawyer, and seems to require that I post the Octave source code
along with any script I post online, which seems unnecessarily
cumbersome.
On the Octave license page it is stated:
"Although enhancements to Octave that are written as function files in
Octave's scripting language are not required to be redistributed under
the terms of the GPL, we encourage you to release your enhancements to
Octave under the same terms for the benefit of all users."
http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/license.html
However the FSF GPL FAQ
(http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatCaseIsOutputGPL)
suggests otherwise. (The faq entry is slightly long so I did not
paste it). Essentially the answer says that if the interpreter
provides bindings to GPL code then programs written for it must be
GPL'd. The Octave source is GPL'd, and I imagine it probably uses
several GPL'd libraries (perhaps GSL?), which suggests I need to GPL
anything I post anywhere.
Any clarification you could provide would be much appreciated.
Thank you for your time,
Trevor Law