Hacked gnuplot/win32 binaries NOT AVAILABLE ANY MORE

[John W. Eaton]

On 10-Jul-1997, Mumit Khan <address@hidden> wrote:

| Re-reading the copyright statement, it seems that distributing even source
| patch is NOT ok.

| Now that I know that the "gnu" in "gnuplot" was just accidental, and
| not what it seems (I know that everybody else knew this, but I've never
| had to use gnuplot since I have access to other packages, so never knew), 
| I'm a bit concerned about octave's dependence on gnuplot for graphics.

I believe it is ok to distribute a patch but not a complete modified
distribution.  The Copyright file that is distributed with gnuplot
says:

 * Copyright (C) 1986 - 1993   Thomas Williams, Colin Kelley
 *
 * Permission to use, copy, and distribute this software and its
 * documentation for any purpose with or without fee is hereby granted,
 * provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and
 * that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear
 * in supporting documentation.
 *
 * Permission to modify the software is granted, but not the right to
 * distribute the modified code.  Modifications are to be distributed
 * as patches to released version.
 *
 * This software is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

Having to distribute patches is somewhat inconvenient.  I would
definitely prefer to see gnuplot distributed under less restrictive
terms.  I originally decided to use gnuplot because it was reasonably
easy to adapt it for my purposes and I was already using it for other
things.  Now I think there are probably better alternatives, but it is
a lot of work to switch.

My long term plans are still to create a relatively generic interface
to plotting that Octave will use internally and that will make it
easier for people to adapt whatever plotting package they prefer.
Unfortunately, it may be a while before that actually happens.

jwe