Re: Terms of use Mathworks file exchange

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 7 May 2012 12:13, Judd Storrs <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 5:28 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>
> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
> I think it's a little blown out of proportion, no? If you have
> BSD-licensed source, you have BSD-licensed source--it doesn't matter
> where it came from. If Mathworks does not hold the copyright to the
> files it cannot pursue anyone for copyright infringement of those
> files.

Right, it's not a copyright violation because they don't own the
copyright. It's probably a terms of service of service violation.

> At best they'd have a TOS violation if your interpretation is
> correct.

Right, and this is nothing to sneeze at. Sony's lawsuit against
Geohotz hinged on this, a ToS violation, because they claimed it was a
breach of contract. I don't know if there is a case where ToS have
been successfully argued to fall under contract law, but if you can be
bullied with this argument by a giant before a judge even decides
about it, what does it matter?

> But I suspect those clauses have more to do with policing/curating
> uploads

I don't there is much good will here. Deliberately excluding copyleft
and deliberately excluding software that may also work on Octave does
not seem like good will to me. I assume malice, not idiocy, because
they're sneaking this under the users' noses, and they are directly
attacking free software such as Octave.

- Jordi G. H.