Re: proposed FAQ entries about licensing

[John W. Eaton]

On  8-Apr-2009, Judd Storrs wrote:

| It would be nice if there was an non-MEX interface that was available
| to any free software, not only the full GPLv3 flavor. According to the
| octave documentation there are performance penalties to using MEX in
| octave.
| 
| If we require non-GPLv3 projects to code to the MEX, then it makes it
| that much easier for others to just recompile the modules locally and
| link free software libraries to Matlab.

If this is the result of having the MEX interface allow any license
and the .oct file interface requiring a license compatible with GPLv3,
then I agree that this is probably not a good thing.  It is certainly
unfortunate in the case of GPLv2-only.  But there are other free
software licenses that are not compatible with any version of the GPL,
and I don't think it is wise to try to make a statement like "it's OK
to link with any free software license".  For example, how would you
define "free sofware license" for this purpose?

jwe