From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Tue Jan 20 11:21:57 1998
Subject: Re: MATLAB COMPATIBILITY 
From: Jim Van Zandt <jrv at mbunix dot mitre dot org>
To: Mario Storti <mstorti at minerva dot unl dot edu dot ar>
cc: help-octave at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 12:21:21 -0500

In message <199801201314 dot KAA06659 at minerva dot unl dot edu dot ar>, Mario Storti writes:
>I'm also highly interested in sparse matrix support since I work in
>the area of finite elements.  There are several sparse packages in
>Fortran but recently I met one that is in C++: meschach from David
>E. Steward & Zbigniew Leyk from Australia. I don't know about the
>legal part. This is the copyright,

>**  3.  No charge is made for this software or works derived from it.  
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This part would prevent it from becoming part of the main Debian
distribution.  

Maybe the authors could be pursuaded to release it under the GPL or
LGPL as well?  The GPL addresses access to the source code, not price.
The LGPL (for libraries) says that the user must be able to get the
sources for the library code and/or link with new versions of the
library (i.e. he is not guaranteed access to the sources for the rest
of the program).

For a discussion of the Debian Free Software Guidelines, see:
	http://www.debian.org/social_contract.html

                                - Jim Van Zandt