On 10/29/10 04:34 AM, Jason Grout wrote:
On 10/28/10 10:20 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
On 10/29/10 12:33 AM, Dan Drake wrote:
On Thu, 28 Oct 2010 at 12:31PM -0700, William Stein wrote:
Our Sage contract with Stein only covers computers owned by University
of Washington Seattle. Any other installations must be removed.
Faculty and Staff of the UW Seattle campus may connect to
http://sagemath.org/homeuse/ to request a Sage license for their
personally owned computer under the Home-use program. RA's TA's and
other student positions are not considered staff by Stein. Sage
licenses acquired through the Home-use program may not be used for
work associated with any UW class being attended by the Faculty/Staff
member as a student.
Jason Grout discovered as much a couple years ago:
http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/5d93024ffaf3ff3e/
There, a Wolfram rep effectively said that connecting to a university
computer over ssh violates their license. And now we see that they're
willing to enforce that. I can only see this as being good for Sage.
Dan
This I think might be a non-issue. I know for the site license UCL had,
it permitted staff to install Mathematica on their own computer. I found
this out by chance one day, when I wanted to move a mathematica license
from one machine to another. The stupid Procurement Department had never
told us we could legally install Mathematica on our own computers.
So I asked for a SPARC license to run Mathematica on my home computer. I
was originally told "A Sun is not a home computer", but after some
discussions, they made an exception and gave me a license for SPARC.
So if your license is anything like the UCL one was several years ago,
then you could install Mathematica on it directly. In which case, since
the machine itself is covered, that would permit you to ssh in.
So:
1. What happens when I am at my parents' house and use their computer? I
can't ssh into a server with a campus site license and use mma there?
(William brought this up on that thread from a few years ago.)
I guess you could ssh to your computer at home, then ssh from there to the uni!
That way the only computer connected to the uni is one you can legally use
Mathematica on. (That will only work if you run your home computer all the time,
which personally I do - at least my Sun Ultra 27 anyway).
2. I have a site license from my university to use mma. I think the
license means that I can't ssh into sage.math and use mma from there
(since my computer is not on the same site license as sage.math).
I think that's pretty clear that would be wrong.
If using a web browser is not permitted, this would be an interesting
question to ask. I suspect it would get scrathing their head!
"Would it be permitted to use a modified version of Firefox, that was
used as a front end to Mathematica using the Mathlink protocol (not
HTTP) to communicate with the kernel?"
Referring to that thread from a couple of years ago, I emailed Wolfram
back with a similar question: what if I use an ssh client from a web
browser? (there are such java ssh applets) I also pointed out that it
was possible to get the source of a function, and asked that question
again. I never got a reply. I think I emailed them again about a month
later asking for a reply, but again never got a reply. I can post the
emails I sent here if anyone is interested.
Thanks,
Jason
Yes, post what you sent for good fun. I'd stick it on sci.math.symoblic myself,
pointing out you have asked WRI for an answer twice, but have never received one.
Some of the developers of Mathematica are really nice people and "switched on",
but it does seem Wolfram Research's legal department seem control freaks.
IMHO, if one is entitled to use a product like Mathematica, the exact method you
use to connect to it should not really be relevant as long as it does not permit
unlicensed users to use it. I think WRI are being most unreasonable if they
don't see that. It seems unreasonable to stop someone connecting via a mobile
phone on any other method that technically allows them to do it.
Dave
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