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Re: Terms of use Mathworks file exchange


From: Judd Storrs
Subject: Re: Terms of use Mathworks file exchange
Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 15:14:26 -0400

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden> wrote:
That's selective quoting. There are other terms that we have quoted
that are additional restrictions, and they do have a choice in the
matter, because the BSD-style license grants them that choice. The
GPL's liberty-or-death clause (paraphrased: if you can't distribute it
under the terms of the GPL, you can't distribute it at all) would
forbid them from adding the further restrictions that they added.

The GPL isn't available there because MathWorks doesn't want it there, not because the GPL would be incompatible with the new ToS. Especially since the ToS explicitly states that the original license of the files is preserved. Distributing source isn't even remotely similar to distributing binaries. The GPL's teeth relate pretty specifically to the ability to distribute precompiled binaries. If I'm already distributing source, there's nothing else for me to do--everyone I gave source to has the source.

Also, you continue to misunderstand the BSD license. Unless MathWorks has some control of the copyright (via authorship, assignment or creation of a derivative work), it's only wiggle room is to distribute binaries without providing source. That doesn't apply in any sense of imagination to distributing third-party source code verbatim.


--judd

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