Re: Packaging FOSS that requires MATLab at runtime
Ankur Sinha wrote:
Since correctness is really important here, if upstream does not
test
the toolboxes against Octave, we shouldn't either
I think that if it runs at all, we should ship it.
Some upstreams seem pretty conservative. E.g., SPM seems to have done a lot
of work on Octave compatibility already, and the page seems to imply that it
will more or less work, with some issues, they just do not support it still.
Fedora, in contrast, is a forward-looking distribution that is about
shipping Features First and with Freedom (i.e., no MATLAB!) included.
In addition, they also write that the issues are mainly in the GUI, not in
the computation backend where correctness is important.
- Use COPR to provide Matlab only toolboxes (as I think the above
rule
does not apply to COPR).
Would that be OK?
I think it is NOT OK, because software in Copr is also supposed to comply
with Fedora licensing policies:
https://docs.pagure.org/copr.copr/user_documentation.html#what-i-can-buil...
Now, arguably, the package itself is not improperly licensed, but if the
Copr is documented as working only with an external proprietary interpreter
(whether or not that is actually true, though as far as I know you need to
actually compile the mex file against Octave for it to work with Octave, so
if you only package the binary for MATLAB, it won't work without MATLAB),
that is stretching the rules.
Kevin Kofler