Re: Octave reputation

[Tom Holroyd (NIH/NIMH) [E]]

Jordi Gutierrez Hermoso wrote:
> ... very few
> people will even think it's immoral to use an unlicensed copy of
> Matlab.

That may be your perception, but trust me, there are many people who do think 
it is immoral, not to mention the illegality of pirated software. And if I 
might add, this sort of attitude makes the commercial vendors even more 
unhappy, and less likely to be cooperative with open source projects.

> Nobody will check the status of your Matlab license agreement
> if you publish a paper in which you acknowledge your use of Matlab.

But what if they do?

> Indeed, if proprietary software really got paid as much as its license
> agreements say it needs to be paid, or used as restrictively as the
> same licenses say, nobody would use it. We all know it's overpriced.

Some of us do pay those prices (and we don't like being reminded of it).

> Few of us have read the licenses enough to know how ridiculous their
> terms are.

Again, you are speaking for yourself only.

> Unlicensed copies of Matlab and the Mathworks mostly
> turning a blind eye towards copyright infringements is a big reason
> for why Matlab turned into an industry standard. The same goes for
> many other pieces of proprietary software as industry standards, like
> Photoshop.

That's ridiculous.

--
Tom Holroyd, Ph.D.
"The fundamentally misconceived nature versus nurture debate should be
abandoned: child development is inextricably both." -- Louann Brizendine