"John W. Eaton" <address@hidden> writes:
I think we all understand that the GPL clearly forbids distributing the
resulting binaries.
I think I understood this. I still wondered if I could distribute the
source code and Makefile.
If your intent is to attempt to avoid the terms of the GPL simply by
releasing a thin wrapper between Octave and a proprietary library,
I personnaly don't attempt anything. I don't plan on selling
anything. If distributing my source code poses a legal issue, then I
just won't distribute it or try to switch to Matlab but this may require
some work and I'm not sure to have the time.
You may think you are helping people by releasing this code, but I
would urge to you not do it and instead work to provide free software
drivers for the hardware.
I do scientific research. To do this, I choose the acquisition card with
the required datasheet. It happens that National Instruments provides a
free closed-source cross-platform library to interface this card with a
computer.
I don't have the knowledge nor the time to reverse-engineer their card
and write my own driver. End of story.