From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Javier Fernandez Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: gnuplot Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:11:10 +0000 (UTC) Organization: SDF Public Access UNIX System, Est. 1987 Message-ID: References: <87iof9f6qk.fsf@debian.uxu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1423673550 10398 80.91.229.3 (11 Feb 2015 16:52:30 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:52:30 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Feb 11 17:52:30 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1YLaWZ-0003tQ-3G for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Feb 2015 17:52:27 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:45970 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YLaWY-0004zk-KZ for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Wed, 11 Feb 2015 11:52:26 -0500 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!goblin3!goblin.stu.neva.ru!odin.sdf-eu.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 39 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: faeroes.sdf.org Original-X-Trace: odin.sdf-eu.org 1423671070 8220 192.94.73.9 (11 Feb 2015 16:11:10 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: usenet@odin.sdf-eu.org Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 16:11:10 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: tin/2.0.1-20111224 ("Achenvoir") (UNIX) (NetBSD/6.1.5 (amd64)) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:210364 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 11:51:14 -0500 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:102642 Archived-At: Emanuel Berg wrote: > Do you mean gnuplot-mode has a missing/conflicting > license, or gnuplot has? With gnuplot that should be > OK as there are built-in modes for God knows what > technologies that most likely have licenses all over > the place, including none at all. 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. http://gnuplot.cvs.sourceforge.net/gnuplot/gnuplot/Copyright?view=markup The license I think is pretty similar to the old Pine licence, and that led to problems between the FSF and the Univeristy of Washington for distributing modified versions of Pine. Now a 'libre' clone exists: Alpine (Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet News and Email) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_(email_client) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpine_(email_client) The moral of the story is that software that is not 'libre' has converted to 'libre' or died. In the case of scientific plotting pgplot, a once popular library for scientifc plotting in compiled programs (Fortran, C, C++) died (last release 15 years ago) since Caltech didn't allow distributing modified sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGPLOT 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. There are GPL programs with similar functionality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyxplot