Re: Antitrust: Commission opens proceedings against MathWorks

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 1 March 2012 11:14, Kai Habel <address@hidden> wrote:
> I have seen this today at the Heise ticker [1],[2]. I don't know what
> relevance this has for octave.
>
>
> [1]
> http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/12/208&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
> [2]
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/EU-Kommission-prueft-Wettbewerbsverstoss-durch-MathWorks-1446391.html

Who knows how this will turn out legally, but it is interesting for
Octave. The best thing that could happen is that the Mathworks will
have to remove the clause from their license agreement that says that
you can't use Matlab to build a competing product. Without that
clause, we might be able to accept a Matlab license as a donation for
Octave and use it to improve Matlab compatibility. As it is, I
specifically do not use Matlab myself and ask other people to check
results on Matlab for me in order to adhere to a clean-room reverse
engineering protocol. I think Ben, Rik, or others might also benefit
with such a thing.

I don't know if this feasible though, and if not having that clause
affects or not clean-room reverse engineering. It might not make a
difference.

jwe also points out that this isn't the first anti-trust TMW has had:

    http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/press_releases/2002/200164.htm

- Jordi G. H.