Re: The problem with gnuplot

[Russell Shaw <rjshaw@netspace.net.au>]

Michael Banck wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 13, 2005 at 05:42:15PM -0300, Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer wrote:
>
> > Someone (sorry for not knowing who) asked, if I'm not much mistaken,
> > about what do people complain about gnuplot, apart from it's GUI. Well,
> > I think gnuplot's greatest problem is it's license. Why? It complies
> > with the FSF's guides, OK, but I think it's annoying to have to patch
> > the sources every time you want to improve it. If it would be GPLed, I'm
> > sure more people would like to contribute with it.
>
> Note that you need the agreement from everybody who holds copyrights on
> parts of the code in order to relicense a project.  This can sometimes
> (in the case of very old projects with potentionally many external
> contributors, like gnuplot) be a very hard thing unless you rip code out
> and rewrite it (or start over from scratch).

Authors of a new project should have a clause in their licence that all
additions fall under their ownership, but that it does not otherwise
affect the rights of the additions author to that code outside of
the project.