Private company and code salvation

[Olaf Till]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 10:53:02AM +0200, David Bateman wrote:
> Olaf Till wrote:
> >Maybe I am wrong, but if a company distributes proprietary mex-source
> >code that compiles and runs with Octave, the company must surely claim
> >that this is accidental, and the code is intended for Matlab. If they
> >admit that the code is intended to run with Octave, they admit to
> >violate the GPL. If the company provides funding or other support to
> >Octave (wasn't this the original argument?) in order to keep their
> >code running, how can they claim the code is not for Octave?
> >  
> Strictly speaking yes, but I'd like some sort of clear statement that 
> this is a situation that the Octave developers understand and will take 
> no action against the company in this case.

But I think this would help to circumvent the license of any GPL-ed
library Octave is, or will be, linked with.

> In any case the defend of 
> accidental support of code in Octave is independent of any funding 
> legally and you'd have to establish a causal link between the two in 
> court to take action. I'd say that would be an uncertain thing.