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Free Linear Programming Software?

Posted by Cliff on from the complex-educational-code dept.

Chao-Kuei Hung asks: "I will be teaching a freshman level math class next semester in which half of the course deal will deal with linear programming. I found a number of linear programming software packages from this website, but none of them seems to meet any of the FSF/OSI/Debian's definition of free/open source software, although some come with source code and some cost $0 for educational use. Does there exist truely free software for this topic? Are there LP modules/plug-ins for things like octave, rlab, or R?"

5 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Freshmeat has some by jpt.d · · Score: 4, Informative

    GNU glpk
    http://freshmeat.net/projects/glpk/

    "The GLPK package is intended for solving linear programming (LP) and mixed integer linear programming (MIP) problems. It is a set of routines organized in the form of a library and written in the ANSI C programming language."

    A survey of available software:
    http://www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/surveys/LP/lp4.ht ml

    Hope some of these might help

    --
    What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
  2. Linear Programming FAQ by FunkyRat · · Score: 4, Informative

    Perhaps this might be of some use?

  3. LPABO and LPAKO by tjmather · · Score: 4, Informative

    LPABO and LPAKO are public domain Linear Programming packages
    from the Seoul National University. LPABO
    uses an interior-point method, while LPAKO uses the simplex method.

    I've looked at several other free LP solvers, and this package looks like it is fairly fast and
    robust.

    I wasn't able to find a license for these packages. Maybe you could ask the author about releasing their software under the GPL or another Free Software license?

  4. Octave by superid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not strictly for linear programming, but Octave (http://www.octave.org) is an important tool on your numerical analysis toolbelt.

  5. GSL - GNU Scientific Library by wfrp01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The GNU Scientific Library is a relatively recent addition to the catalog of GNU software. It looks to be very impressive.

    --

    --Lawrence Lessig for Congress!