From help-octave-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Fri Jan 22 12:15:44 1999
Subject: Re: licenses and law
From: Karim Elaagouby <karim at idealab dot com>
To: Daniel Heiserer <Daniel dot Heiserer at bmw dot de>
CC: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>,         "help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu" <help-octave@bevo.che.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 10:15:46 -0800


Interesting topic indeed. Lately, I have been working on this kind of
the issues 
for the company I work for. Here's a summary of infos I gathered from
lawyers.

Copyright (c): is automatically owned by the author (Company,
institution of
person). Obtaining a government Copyright in a given country is merely a 
recognition of ownership in that country, and serves only in legal suit.

License agreement: is the contract between the owner of the copyright
and 
the buyer (whether money is involved or not). GPL is unique in its kind,
since it shares all copyrights with new owners.

In conclusion I would read The Mathworks license agreement. If the
license 
doesn't say that you are not allowed to use/modify their toolbox with a 
different software, you are in luck. But, of course you won't be able
to share it with others.

If you rewrite code from scratch (as JWE suggested) to do the same thing 
that other applications do, then, unless the idea is patented there's no
problem
with doing that.

Hope this helps.


Daniel Heiserer wrote:
> 
> Hi John ,
> >
> > On 22-Jan-1999, Daniel Heiserer <Daniel dot Heiserer at bmw dot de> wrote:
> >
> > | El Jeffo wrote:
> > | >
> > | > Anyone familiar with the matlab function "step()" which kinda gives a
> > | > graph of some lti system?  or can I just steal the step.m file from matlab
> > | > and use it in octave?  Anyone else ever borrowed .m files from matlab?  Is
> > | > it legal?  (just want a matlab like program for linux cause I don't want
> > | > to reboot to windows)
> > | >
> > |
> > | I won't steel it (Copyright) ;-). But if you have it, you probably paid
> > | for it
> > | and than it's yours and you can do with it what you want (I think).
> >
> > I think not.  I would bet that the copyright and/or license severely
> > restricts what you can do with it.
> 
> Well I am not sure if that works (legally). I am not a legal (?) expert.
> I think you cannot restrict the usage of something you sell.
> Think of .....
> 
> Assume you sell a knife and say it is only allowed to cut tomatoes.
> If I want a use it for playing darts I don't think that somebody can
> resrict me from that (as long as I don't aim on somebody).
> Or assume I would really buy MS-Ofiice, I don't think that they could
> restrict me NOT using it under linux' wine (perhaps they think, but they
> don't make the laws).
> Assume you buy a BMW, BMW cannot forbid you to drive in your garden with
> it.
> 
> ........
> 
> ??????? I am not sure, but I think this an interestin area.
> Any comments from "legal experts"?
> 
> --
> Mit freundlichen Gruessen
>                                  Daniel Heiserer
> -----
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Dipl.-Phys. Daniel Heiserer, BMW AG, Knorrstrasse 147, 80788 Muenchen
> Abteilung EK-20
> Tel.: 089-382-21187, Fax.: 089-382-42820
> mailto:daniel dot heiserer at bmw dot de

--
Karim Elaagouby
Information Systems Analyst
idealab! 
www.idealab.com