USING Octave in a commercial environment

[John W. Eaton]

On 25-Mar-2011, ygramul wrote:

| Hello, I work for a civil engineering company, and want to know if I can USE
| Octave for my work, such as producing graphs or solving sets of equations
| (I'd have used Matlab/numpy otherwise). 
| 
| I ask this because most questions I have seen so far on "commercial use"
| involve releasing new software or producing derivative work. I merely want
| to USE Octave internally. My apologies if this sounds like a silly question,
| I want to err on the right side of a possible licensing nightmare :)

The short answer is yes.

The longer answer is that when we talk about free (as in freedom)
software like Octave, we are really talking about the following four
freedoms for users of the software:

  * The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

  * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make
    it do what you wish (freedom 1).  Access to the source code is a
    precondition for this.

  * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
    (freedom 2).

  * The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to
    others (freedom 3).  By doing this you can give the whole
    community a chance to benefit from your changes.  Access to the
    source code is a precondition for this.

For more info, see

  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

jwe