Re: matlab2tikz and dual BSD/GPL licensing

[Judd Storrs]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 9:27 PM, Ben Abbott <address@hidden> wrote:
> The project matlab2tikz is now able to handle surface plots.
>
>        
> http://win.ua.ac.be/~nschloe/content/matlab2tikz-v006-released-initial-support-surface-plots
>
> I've contacted the author about using a GPL based or compatible office. 
> Currently he (Nico) has adopted the BSD license promoted by MathWorks, but 
> likes the idea of licensing under GPL.
>
> Is it possible to license both under BSD and GPL? ... and how might that be 
> done?

It is possible to dual license this way.

On the other hand, it seems somewhat silly because the 3-clause BSD
license is GPLv2 and GPLv3 compatible. The issue is when a contributor
insists on GPL-only for their patches. Nico needs to be very clear
about how he will treat such contributions. BSD/GPL dual-licensed
files can lead to discord:

http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Continuing_Dual-Licensing_Discussions
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS2902106404.html

Personally, it seems to me that the presence of the BSD license option
defeats the GPL. It really depends on whether Nico wants to possibly
maintain two branches. Perhaps one branch containing GPL-only
enhancements hosted on octave-forge with components that cannot be
used in the BSD-licensed branch, and a separate branch that is GPL/BSD
dual-licensed branch.

The other alternative is to license GPL-only -- but of course he would
have to forgo MatlabCentral hosting in that case. As far as I know
GPL-licensed packages can be used in Matlab, Mathworks just won't host
them.


--judd