The replacement for PGPlot is an interface layer called PG2PLplot that takes the PGPlot API and converts it into calls to PLPlot which is a LGPL, unencumbered system.  The problem with conversion is that it doesn't convert everything, but getting it to convert everything and fixing the interface problems should about a month.  In addition to the copyright issues, there seems to have been no development on PGPlot in over a decade, whereas PLplot is being actively developed.

Since Starlink has a special exception for PGplot, I'll work first on getting it packaged and I should be able to do it before the 10/15 version freeze deadline for Mageia.  Once its packaged I'll work next on getting it working with the PG2PLplot interface layer.




On Mon, Sep 30, 2013 at 6:21 PM, AL13N <alien@rmail.be> wrote:
> Just a heads up about packaging starlink for linux distributions.  I've
> gotten starlink to compile and link using native libraries on Mageia, and
> I've uploaded my changes to https://github.com/joequant/starlink.  I
> haven't actually try to run any of the new executables, but one step at a
> time.
>
> The big bottleneck that I have right now is PGPLOT.  The trouble is that
> PGPLOT seems to have a non-distro friendly non-commercial license that
> would prevent it from being added to linux distros.
>
> Fortunately, there is a drop in replacement for PGPLOT called pg2plplot
> which links against PLplot which unlike PGPLOT is actively being
> developed.  Unfortunately there are a lot of additional calls that haven't
> been implemented yet,
>

this PGPLOT is a dependency?

how unfriendly is this PGLPOT? non-redistributable?

and how bad is this pg2plot? if it forks from PGPLOT, doesn't it have the
same license issues?

and if it's a drop-in replacement, how can it have unimplemented calls?