Re: Is it safe to use Matlab?

[Carnë Draug]

2011/7/26 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
> The Mathworks right now mostly ignores Octave because we're still
> small potatoes compared to them.
>
> HOWEVER
>
> Should we ever become a significant competitor, I don't doubt they'd
> try a few legal assaults. In this regard, we always tell people,
> "don't read Matlab source when implementing functions for Octave",
> i.e. avoid legal risk.
>
> The Matlab license has a number of restrictions, one of which is that
> you cannot use Matlab to build a competing product, and you can't
> provide network access. Whether it's enforceable who knows, but they
> at least they're trying.
>
> I've been careful myself to make a point of asking people "what does
> Matlab do here" but not attempt to use Matlab myself to do it (clean
> room reverse engineering). However, I've seen that several people
> writing code for Octave also seemingly have access to Matlab to test
> things. Is this safe? Someone offered to lend me their computer with
> Matlab installed on it to test things, and I'm not sure if this safe
> or not.

On this subject, I have another question since it's already coming up.
Is it legal to read their documentation to come up with a function
that uses the same API?

Thanks,
Carnë