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Re: The problem with gnuplot



Hi,

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.

On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 09:58:28PM +0200, Thomas Walter wrote:

> Here I need some light.
> 
> Where is a copyright break when I install from source using configure
> options of my best choice, in this case for example 'libreadline' and
> its best friend 'libhistory'.

Well, I do not think there is any (depending on the precise licenses
actually) as GPL-like licenses are considered to be enforced only
while distributing software.  Which exactly is what Debian is for.

See: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=322827

> By the way, from my point of view:
> For software in this categorie (science, heavy math oriented) it is best
> to install always from source to profit from best optimizations for
> underlying hardware. F.e. just think about 'atlas' and 'fftw'.

So you think a Gentoo-like way of distributing the software would work
around the licensing issues?

Instead of workarounds, could not it be easier to explain to science
software authors the benefits of _really_ free software (I mean DFSG)
licenses?  Is not the free software way of producing software a mimic of
the way of producing knowledge and science?  I believe most of
almost-free licenses for science software are the simple consequence
of ignorance or lack of concern for the copyright matters.  Binary
distributions like Debian cannot overlook such problems.

See for example:
http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/physics-software-rant.html

Best regards,
Frederic Lehobey

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