Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software

[Judd Storrs]

2010/2/14 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
> On 14 February 2010 19:06, Judd Storrs <address@hidden> wrote:
>> "All content contained in the MATLAB Central File Exchange may only be
>> used with MathWorks products."
>
> I think we ought to ignore that. My guess is that it's most likely
> unenforceable. They have a similar clause in their EULAs that says
> that they will revoke their license if you use competing software.
> They haven't (yet!) claimed copyright on the free software that they
> host in their servers, so if we violate their ToS, the best they can
> do is revoke the right to let some IP somewhere download software from
> their servers.
>
> But IANAL...
>

The thing I'm wondering about now is that with the new content policy
they could easily in the future require a valid account and login to
download content from the servers. (They don't currently--they only
require an account/login for uploading and commenting). However, now
that everything is BSD licensed, there isn't much to stop them from
restricting access to the downloads to account holders in the future.
To take evil to a new level all they could additionally monitor the
public octave mailing lists against their membership lists and purge
accounts.

I'll just continue to avoid them like the plague.


--judd