Re: gnuplot

[Emanuel Berg <embe8573@student.uu.se>]

Javier Fernandez <jafernan@faeroes.freeshell.org>
writes:

> gnuplot despite its name is not 'free' software in
> the sense of freedom. You can distribute gnuplot's
> source, but you cannot distribute modified versions
> of the source.

Again, I'm not saying *gnuplot* should be included in
Emacs, how now that would work :) I'm talking about
the gnuplot-mode. In gnuplot-mode.el I read

    ;; Copyright (C) 2010-2013 Mike McCourt
    ;;
    ;; Authors: Mike McCourt <...>
    ;; URL: https://github.com/mkmcc/gnuplot
    ;; Version: 20131203.2159
    ;; X-Original-Version: 1.2.0
    ;; Keywords: gnuplot, plotting

    ;; This file is not part of GNU Emacs.

It doesn't say anything about what (if any) licence
is at work, but I would conclude from all this
Mr McCourt have his reasons which we may or may not
agree with, but again it doesn't matter because MELPA
is here and gnuplot-mode is in MELPA and he who finds
both Emacs and gnuplot will find MELPA, I'm confident.

By the way, I CC this to the author: let's see what
happens.

> gnuplot seems to be an exception to the rule and is
> pretty healthy (5.0 release was 1 month ago). I know
> nothing about the authors, but they do a great work
> and have to be working very hard to keep gnuplot
> active. I think at some point they will release it
> under a more liberal license. Otherwise gnuplot will
> stagnate.

Of course, I hope they continue work on gnuplot but I
kind of disagree in the sense that I think gnuplot is
just like a programming language: imagine from now on,
no one ever did anything to modernize C - it could
(and would) still be used to do a thousand super-cool
present and future projects. I don't think the world
of math, stats, and visualization will *ever* change
that much as to make gnuplot with its current
functionality level obsolete.

> There are GPL programs with similar functionality

And those are...?

-- 
underground experts united