Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software

[Judd Storrs]

It's a private server. It's not yours. They are not seizing software.
If you don't agree with the change, host your software elsewhere.
Unless they violated their terms-of-service it's hard to see what
actual wrong they've done besides alienate the segment of their users
that care about copyleft and want to host their files on
file-exchange. Nobody was _required_ to update their license, socially
coerced, yes. Some begrudgingly chose to update their license and some
moved their software off the Mathworks server. The Mathworks does not
forbid distribution of GPL-licensed m/mex-files--they just won't host
them on file-exchange. If you're a Mathworks customer or stockholder
take it up with them.

What, exactly, do you want me or us to do about this besides whine?

It's their server not yours just as the FSF's servers are not
Microsofts. Do you think the FSF has an obligation to host Microsoft
Update for free?

Besides, I've never thought that the FSF was primarily about advancing
the "GPL" per se. I always thought the GPL was a mechanism for
achieving truly free programmer community--the GPL to be a necessary
evil to achieve those social goals in an imperfect world. The goal is
to arrive at a world where the GPL is unnecessary. The Mathworks
doesn't currently want to be part of that world. This action is the
Mathworks' social engineering mechanism for achieving their own vision
of a programmer community. File-exchange was never an ideologically
pure free community, anyway. I've never used it because it required
sorting through with all sorts of restrictive licenses.

The bottom line is if you don't like the Mathworks community, don't
participate and persuade others to not participate there. Stay here
with freedom-loving coders.


--judd