Re: [OctDev] Reading NI TDMS files

[Ryan Rusaw]

On Dec 21, 2007 10:17 AM, John W. Eaton <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 20-Dec-2007, Ryan Rusaw wrote:
>
> | I've written some Eclipse plugins for Octave development, that I've
> | licensed under the GPL-incompatible EPL. The Eclipse framework (DLTK)
> | I've based my code on allows for external debugging engines to be
> | integrated if the speak a documented network protocol, DBGP
> | (http://xdebug.org/docs-dbgp.php).
> |
> | I've also written a DBGP based debug engine for Octave, that I've
> | licensed under the GPLv3, as it certainly is a derivative work of
> | Octave.
> |
> | It was my understanding that I can only distribute them separately.
> | Do you mean that I am mistaken and in fact I can't distribute the DBGP
> | debugger at all?
>
> Distributing components separately doesn't allow you to avoid the
> terms of the GPL.  From your description above, it sounds like what
> you are doing is OK, but I'm not familiar with these tools, so it
> would help if you could describe more clearly exactly how the Eclipse
> plug-in and the DBGP based debug engine are connected (to each other
> and to Octave).
>
> Parts that link with Octave (either dynamically or statically, to form
> a single executable program) must have GPL-compatible licenses.
> Communicating over a network protocol is not linking, so if
> your Eclipse plug-in is only linked with Eclipse and not Octave, and
> only communicates with Octave over a network connection (so that
> Octave is running in a separate process) then the plug-in may have any
> license you choose (though I would hope it would be a free software
> license).
>
> jwe
>

Separate processes, using socket communication only.  The part that
links with Octave is licensed under the GPL v3 or later, while the
Eclipse part is licensed under the EPL, a GPL-incompatible Free
Software license.

I am concerned with whether or not I can distribute binaries from the
two parts together in one package as the binary distribution terms are
incompatible, or do I have to continue to distribute them separately?

Ryan