Is it safe to use Matlab?

[Hamid 2C]

Sorry if this is just a noise or may be I am hearing so much about
software patents these days. Anyway, don't they have any patent on
their API or the language itself? IMHO, something similar to Java and
Oracle.

Hamid

On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 10:07 PM, Daniel Pfenniger
<address@hidden> wrote:
> 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
>
>