Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software

[David Bateman]

Richard Stallman wrote:
>     Scilab is non-free software. In scilab site says that is distributed
>     under the CeCILL license and that it is compatible with GPL.
>
>     http://www.scilab.org/products/scilab/license
>
> That is a surprise to me.
> The CeCILL is indeed free and GPL-compatible.
> This is good news.
>
>     Scilab changed its license to CeCILL 2.0 with the release of Scilab 5.
>     The GNU website lists the CeCILL 2.0 as GPL-compatible.
>
> I'm relieved that my memory was not at fault.
> What was the date?
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>   
The page

http://www.scilab.org/products/scilab/history

lists the date as 2008. Even though scilab integrated with the Digiteo 
lab, INRIA kept a version of scilab (now called scicoslab) which forked 
from Scilab version 4. The scicos block simulator (a bit like simulink 
in matlab), was initially seperate from Scilan itself, and INRIA 
released a couple of versions  under a dual GPL/Scilab license before 
stopping distribution under the GPL. Quoting from the page 
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/scicos/FAQ.html

Q:  Is Scicos free software?
A:  Scicos 4.2 and 4.2.1 were distributed under both the Scilab 4 
license and GPL in order to be included in both Scilab 4 and Scilab 5. 
Scicos 4.4 is only made available in ScicosLab, a fork of Scilab 4, so 
Scicos 4.4 is only distributed under the Scilab 4 license. Under this 
license, Scicos can be used freely in commercial and non-commercial 
applications as long as a modified version is not distributed under a 
different license. See the license.txt file included in the package for 
more details.

Scilab 5 developed the Xcos that forked from scicos at the moment scicos 
itself went non-GPL..  So the Scicoslab fork of scilab and scicos itself 
are definitely not free software even though scilab version 5 is.

D.