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Re: Identify auto tick locations
From: |
John W. Eaton |
Subject: |
Re: Identify auto tick locations |
Date: |
Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:23:37 -0400 |
On 1-Nov-2007, Peter A. Gustafson wrote:
| (Rambling)
| You can reimplement an algorithm after studying it in detail
I urge people working on Octave to NOT take this as advice that it is
OK to read Matlab .m files to learn how they work in order to
reimplement them. I ask that anyone who works on Octave should NEVER
read any Matlab .m files that they may have available to them.
Think of it this way. If I have some code that is not freely
available (default copyright conditions; no copying allowed) then I
can't distribute it. So I modify it a little. Then I clearly have a
derived work, which is not entirely my own, and which I can't legally
distribute. Then I modify it some more. It is still a derived work
and I can't distribute it. Then I continue modifying it until it no
longer resembles the original. Is it still a derived work? I would
argue yes. If you think no, then at what point does it stop being a
derived work? Is it OK if you make all the modifications at once
instead of doing it incrementally? You say it is a grey area, and
open to interpretation. Perhaps, but I would not want to bet on the
interpretation going in your favor if you are the one reading and
reimplementing. So I ask people to please not implement code for
Octave using any method like this.
jwe