On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 01:41:01AM +0000, Carnë Draug wrote:
> On 10 November 2011 16:42, Henrik Alsing Friberg
> <henrik.alsing.frib...@mosek.com> wrote:
> > Hello Octave Developers,
> >
> > I have been developing on a Octave-to-MOSEK Optimization Interface for
> > a while, and have reached a point where I would like to put it on
> > Octave-forge and share the package with other users of MOSEK. Though
> > free academic and trial licenses are available, the project do link to
> > a proprietary library and so would belong in the "nonfree" package
> > directory as:
> >
> > https://octave.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/octave/trunk/octave-forge/nonfree/octmosek
> >
> > I hereby request that this directory is added, and that I am granted
> > authorization to modify its contents.
> > My username on sourceforge.net is: alsing
> >
> > For anyone interested, I have attached the package as it looks so far..
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > Henrik Alsing Friberg
> 
> Hi Henrik
> 
> It seems that your package can't be GPL because it's linking octave
> with non-free software. 

No, that's not a problem. I have a fully working replacement for MOSEK
right in my basement, it's even compatible to the function calls.

Well, obviously I don't have such a replacement, but it serves to show
my point: How can the freeness of some code depend on the existence of
some other code? And if I had a replacement, but it wouldn't be complete
(some functions lacking, for example), would this mean that only the
parts of the octave-forge package that did not call those missing
functions would be free?

Now, right now nobody can distribute binary packages of this
octave-forge package (not even MOSEK!), but the source code under GPL3+
is fine. If it weren't fine, we would have to delete the database/ package;
the header mysql_filtered.h is available under GPL2 (note the missing
"+"). Distributing a binary package built with current Octave (licensed
under GPL3+) is not possible, as GPL2 and GPL3 are incompabible.[1] 

This again serves my point above, but the other way around: the
database/ package was obviously free for years, but now some external
code changed its license. 
Do we really want to say that something that was free for years and
hasn't changed in those years is not free anymore?

If you want to ask someone else, there are several options:
1) You could ask the FSF, they have some mail address for such
questions. However, be prepared for a less than clear answer.
2) You could ask on debian-legal. People there are not lawyers, but
license questions are routinely debated there. 
3) You might ask on fedora-legal,
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/legal/
        
        Thomas

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