Re: Fwd: pcg.m replacement for OCTAVE

[John W. Eaton]

On  8-Sep-2011, fork wrote:

| > that says
| > 
| >   All content contained in the MATLAB Central File Exchange may only
| >   be used with MathWorks products.
| > 
| > Even though the file exchange requires you to submit your code under
| > the terms of a BSD-style license, they are claiming this additional
| > restriction on it.  So I think we should be careful to obtain
| > permission from original authors if we would like to use code from the
| > file exchange with Octave.
| 
| Here is a hypothetical -- 
| 
| Would I be allowed to snarf all the interesting code on File Exchange with a 
BSD
| license and put it a github repository, from which anybody can do anything?  
Can
| you edit BSD-licensed code in a non-mathworks editor like emacs?  Doesn't TMW
| actually support matlab mode development?  
| 
| I don't think this would actually serve any purpose except possibly wake up a
| few nasty people better left sleeping, but I am kind of curious...

I'm only telling you what additional restrictions the MathWorks is
claiming for code distributed from their site.  I have no other
interest in that, or in any of the code in the file exchange unless we
obtain it from the original author with permission to use it.

As I understand it, the MathWorks is completely within their rights to
place further restrictions on BSD-licensed code that they distribute.
I think they should be more explicit about the additional restrictions
in the license terms that appear on the download pages and not just
hide that in the terms of service page.  But I guess they are within
their rights to do that as well.  I mean, they do tell you the terms
of service for using their site, right?  You did read the terms before
using the service, didn't you?

jwe