Re: sparse stuff found

[Daniel Heiserer]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> 
> On 28-Apr-1999, Daniel Heiserer <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> | we had some discussions in this group concerning implementation
> | of sparse matrices.
> |
> | I found a really good looking (free source) package for sparse matrices.
> | It looks really efficient for all the important things like
> | extracting sub-matrices, converting from one sparse representation
> | into another and so on. Maybe we could do real big physical applications
> | with it inside octave (fem, ..... ).
> |
> |
> | http://ftp.cs.umn.edu/dept/sparse/SPARSKIT2.tar.gz
> |
> | Copyright see:
> | http://ftp.cs.umn.edu/dept/sparse/SPARSKIT2
> 
> It says:
> 
>   Permission to copy all or  part of any  material contained in SPARSKIT
>   is only  granted upon approval from Yousef  Saad.  Not  any portion of
>   SPARSKIT can   be used  for  commercial  purposes  or  as  part of   a
>   commercial package.  This notice should accompany   the package in any
>   approved copy.
> 
>   Note to contributors: Before  contributing any software be aware  that
>   above  note     is   the only    global  limitation    against copying
>   software. Eventually this copyright note may be replaced.
> 
> which as I see it is incompatible with the GPL.  The GPL doesn't place
> any restriction on commercial use.


Does it make ANY sense to SELL GPLed code?
The buyer is allowed to modify the code and redistribute it as long as
it
comes with the license and the full source.
Assume you start selling octave with GPL. As far as I can see
somebody can buy it and redistribute it for free.
Am I wrong?

PS:
All this License stuff makes me sick.
It takes more time to figure out how I can use what under which
conditions than just doing something even if is FREE code.
The nice thing once I started with Linux and all the FREE stuff 
was that you really didn't have to care about all this crap 
just do something and it worked marvellous.

Bye daniel