Re: Is it safe to use Matlab?

[Daniel Pfenniger]

Carnë Draug wrote:
> 2011/7/26 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>:
>> The Mathworks right now mostly ignores Octave because we're still
>> small potatoes compared to them.
>>
>> HOWEVER
>>
>> Should we ever become a significant competitor, I don't doubt they'd
>> try a few legal assaults. In this regard, we always tell people,
>> "don't read Matlab source when implementing functions for Octave",
>> i.e. avoid legal risk.
>>
>> The Matlab license has a number of restrictions, one of which is that
>> you cannot use Matlab to build a competing product, and you can't
>> provide network access. Whether it's enforceable who knows, but they
>> at least they're trying.
>>
>> I've been careful myself to make a point of asking people "what does
>> Matlab do here" but not attempt to use Matlab myself to do it (clean
>> room reverse engineering). However, I've seen that several people
>> writing code for Octave also seemingly have access to Matlab to test
>> things. Is this safe? Someone offered to lend me their computer with
>> Matlab installed on it to test things, and I'm not sure if this safe
>> or not.
> 
> On this subject, I have another question since it's already coming up.
> Is it legal to read their documentation to come up with a function
> that uses the same API?
> 
> Thanks,
> Carnë

Samba could be taken as an analogous project.  It must be completely
legal to read the documentation and to analyse the output of a program
in order to make a compatible product.  Reading or disassembling
the code should be completely avoided though.

IANAL, Dan