Re: executing plot in background

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

2010/10/30 Sergei Steshenko <address@hidden>:
> Which legal action ? I.e. pointing to Matlab site does not violate any law
> - unless Matlab site is itself illegal.

Whether it's actually illegal or not doesn't matter. The Mathworks
could initiate legal action upon it all the same. We might have the
legal means to deal with it, but it would be a huge hassle. People
have in the past argued and sometimes succeeded in some jurisdictions
in winning copyright arguments based on linking[1]. Or they could play
unfriendly in other ways, move links around, or purposely trying to
break links from Octave documentation to it.

It's overall a bad idea and not a good long-term solution.

> Octave maybe should stand on its own, but at the moment it can _not_.
> The documentation is insufficient.

So fix it. Documentation is probably one of the easiest ways to submit
patches to Octave, because it requires the least technical expertise.
You don't usually need to know about internals in order to submit
documentation, for example.

> By the way, your fear of legal action in the light of Octave's official
> goal to be a good functional clone of Matlab is quite amusing.

Yeah, you're a short-sighted fool too that amuses me, if it's gonna be
that kind of conversation.

Octave is not large enough to threaten the Mathworks yet, but I'm
quite sure that the day it is, we will see lawsuits flying. They are
obviously not beyond that since their legal terms are quite hostile.
It will probably not happen for a long time, maybe it won't happen
ever at all, but if it ever does, it would be the surest sign that
Octave has finally grown enough.

> You (the Octave developers team)_are_promoting Matlab. By the fact that
> you want Octave to be a good clone of Matlab.

No. We're offering help to Matlab refugees.

- Jordi G. H.

[1] http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case367.cfm