Re: Terms of use Mathworks file exchange

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, we probably shouldn't
even be discussing this publicly. But, here goes...

On 4 May 2012 16:56, Muhali <address@hidden> wrote:
> But to be able to do that requires some change of the code I guess.

No, no changes to the code are required to add further restrictions to it.

> In other words, and to have some clarity once and for all:
>
> If there is code under licence L that is created at time t, and if I *the
> same* code happens to be uploaded to the ML site at some time later than t,
> I am allowed to use the code (e.g. for octave) under license L.

How did you obtain this code? This is what matters. Don't think about
this as source code. Legal langauge is not fed to compiler and
interpreters, but to ambiguous and subjective judges, juries, and
lawyers. What matters is not just the BSD license, but the additional
terms that the Mathworks added.

If you obtained the code from the Mathworks, they impose additional
restrictions on you. They say, "if you get the code from us, you can
only use it this way".  They also say, "if you upload code to us, you
must allow us to impose additional restrictions on it", but not in
such direct language.

If you obtain the code directly from authors without involving the
Mathworks, of course the Mathworks can't impose further restrictions,
since they weren't involved in that transaction at all.

However, if the current Oracle vs Google case turns badly and Oracle
wins the claim that you can copyright APIs, it would be interesting to
see if this has other consequences for the likes of the Octave
project. This is pretty scary, and not to sound alarmist, but if
Oracle wins that case, this could kill the Octave project.

Now, disobeying the Mathworks' restrictions is not a copyright
violation, since they don't generally own the copyright to code that
is uploaded to the Mathworks. It probably is a terms of service
violation, which depending on the jurisdiction (and I'm not a lawyer),
may be a breach of contract. Sony was able to successfully bully
Geohotz by arguing about a terms of service violation, so there seems
to be some precedent in the US that this can be done.

What's hateful about this whole thing is not if the Mathworks can get
away with this or not, but that they're being sneaky and that they're
trying at all to do this.

- Jordi G. H.