@ 20/05/2004 10:46 : wrote Danilo Piazzalunga :
Hello, Sorry if this is not quite in-topic for debian-legal. I run into E4[1], a collection of Matlab functions, distributed under the GPL. However, the software can be only downloaded as a zip file protected by a password, which you can get only by contacting the authors: this effectively equals to requiring registration of the software.
(me again)I just received the password for the ZIP file. I opened it, and it was a bunch of *.m files, all source, none seemed to be obfuscated, and all of them except cssss.m (*) had headers copyrighting them *and* establishing the GPL as the license. accompanying the *.m files, a single LICENSE.txt file containing the complete text of the GPL, including the preamble and the epilog "how to GPL your work".
(*) the cssss.m file appears to have the same effect as $ perl -pi~ -e 's/SS_DVEE/SS_DVSS/g' *.m;; so, if lack of individual attribution is a problem (!?) just yank it off the sources, it's not referenced anywhere in the other *.m files OR in the manual.
Every evidence on the table says to me this is DFSG-free. The "registration" process is only to their own control. If you still have doubts, contact the developers. The manual appears to be non-free.
MatLab, itself, seems to be non-free. So, even if debian packages this, it should go into contrib.
-- br,M