Re: Mathworks-hosted GPL'd software

[Judd Storrs]

I just noticed that MathWorks also appears to have changed the Terms
of Service for the entire Matlab Central website recently. The current
Terms of Service
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/disclaimer.html now includes
the following sentence:

"All content contained in the MATLAB Central File Exchange may only be
used with MathWorks products."

According to my reading of the web.archive.org for
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/ from 2002 through the May 10
2008 snapshot (the last I was able to successfully access) the ToS for
Matlab Central did not include this statement and I don't specifically
see anything in the prior text that would correspond to this new
condition. I believe the GPL would be incompatible with this new
policy so I would not be surprised if the change in ToS occurred at
the same time. I don't think the ToS can limit an octave user's
ability to use and adapt BSD licensed code downloaded from Matlab
Central? Probably the worst they can do is delete a login based on for
ToS violation? They can't use wire-fraud can they?


--judd