Glossary

BSD

Berkeley software distribution license. The BSD license is permissive, in that it allows you to modify and use the code without requiring that you use the same license. It allows you to distribute closed-source binaries.

GPL

The GPL is the GNU general public license. It is one of the most commonly-used open-source sofware licenses. The distinctive feature of the GPL license is that it requires that any code derived from GPL code also uses a GPL license. It also requires that any code that is statically or dynamically linked to GPL code has a GPL-compatible license. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License and http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html

LGPL

The lesser GNU public license. LGPL differs from the GPL in that you can link to LGPL code from non-LGPL code without having to adopt a GPL-compatible license. However, if you modify the code (create a “derivative work”), that modification has to be released under the LGPL. See wikipedia LGPL for more discussion.

Matlab

matlab_ began as a high-level programming language for working with matrices. Over time it has expanded to become a fairly general-purpose language. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MATLAB. It has good numerical algorithms, 2D graphics, and documentation. There are several large neuroscience software projects wtitten in matlab, including SPM software.