Can I share my standalone desktop application to be used freely by end product users?

Dear Matlab developers,

I have developed a GUI application by the app designer and deployed as a standalone desktop application to be installed and used by the product end-users. I want to share this package (only *exe file to be executable and installed and not source files) via GitHub to anyone (public sharing) as I am going to submit this tool as a paper to a prestgious journal for peer-reviewing. I have used an academic license. The end users only installs this alongside Runtime version on their personal computers.

Is it possible? Please confirm.

***Note: I don't want to use this for commercial aims, then no sell, just want to share my tool for research aims.

Kind regards,

Moh

[Mario Malic]

Talk to the support about your case to be 100% sure on this.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

No, with the Academic license, you can share the executable "for internal purposes" within your organization, or with your research collaborators, but you cannot make it public.

There might potentially be work-arounds such as having a form to be filled out certifying that the person is student or works for a university as academic staff... but you probably could not use that license to make the executable available to commercial scientists.

You should talk to Mathworks to clarify the boundaries.

[Walter Roberson]

"I am going to submit this tool as a paper to a prestgious journal for peer-reviewing."

That would likely be considered as "profiting" your career. Profits for the purpose of the Mathworks licence do not always have to be directly monetary.

Academic licenses do permit publishing papers (Student licenses do not permit that, unless publishing is an academic requirement to pass a course). I have my doubts, though, that an executable would be covered. And besides, the license for the compiler for academic use does talk about "internal purposes"

[Mohammad Shahbazy]

Hi Walter,

Thanks for your reply and the useful information.

I invested much on this research project as a part of my thesis and spent two years time and many efforts to finalize this. If I could not publish this as a research paper, it means that's worthless to me.

Since MATLAB Runtime is free for all users and can be downloadable, and regarding our academic license (it should include a campus-wide license) and research paper publishing aims (absolutely not commercial), I think it should be fine to share it as a Runtime-based package for research aims with our field international community (not a large community, maximum maybe 100 persons around the world).

Moreover, It is a fundamental research behind vaccines and immunotherapies, then it can show MATLAB great capabilities to the community and inspire them to use MATLAB in biomedical, life, and clinical sciences. Is there any exemption for such only research-based aims? Please let me know what do you think.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Kind regards,

Moh

[Walter Roberson]

What I think is what I posted already above, that what you want to do is not permitted by the license terms of Academic licenses.

However, I do not work for Mathworks, and what they think has been known to be different from what is written in the license agreement -- and they sometimes grant exceptions.

The restriction is with regards to public access to executables compiled using an Academic license. There is no restriction on distributing source code that you have written. And as I mentioned above about forms, if the user has to apply for access and you only grant access to "collaborators" in the field then I think that would be covered by an Academic license. (That might mean, for example, seldom granting access to undergraduate students, as they are not typically in a position to be considered "collaborators" to your work.)

You need to talk to Mathworks about this.

[Walter Roberson]

Ulysses comments to me in flags:

This is wrong, check the program offering guidelines this is refuted, just spoke to customer support and technical both said the described use should be fine.

[Walter Roberson]

Ulysses : it is not clear exactly which part of my advice you are referring to.

I just checked and comfirmed with Support, that executables compiled with the Academic license, must only be used for internal academic purposes, and cannot be used to distribute executables to the general public.

[Ulysses]

I talked to support as well. They told me the exact opposite. More importantly, when you read through the license, it says that all sharing is governed by the program offering guide, and the program offering guide has no restriction on it. As long as it meets certain guidelines, including not allowing someone to run MATLAB for free on their device. It clearly states you are allowed to share stand-alone applications on the website as well.

[Walter Roberson]

@Ulysses quoting from the response I received:

Thank you for contacting MathWorks. Sorry for the confusion, however, you are correct.

With an Academic License, you can use MATLAB Compiler to create executables, but their use and distribution must remain within the Academic License scope (i.e., teaching and research within your institution).

Since the License is limited to internal Academic use, freely redistributing compiled applications to external end users would fall outside that scope (both “internal” and “academic”) and is not permitted.

MATLAB Runtime enables execution, but it does not override the terms of the Academic License.

Answer 2

[Shivam Malviya]

Hi Shahbazy,

It is my understanding that you have built a standalone desktop application using MATLAB App Designer, and you want to share it with others.

Please refer to the following links;

• Can I release the MATLAB Compiler-generated stand-alone to public? - (mathworks.com)
• Can I sell a MATLAB app designer application? - (mathworks.com)

[Walter Roberson]

Those links are both more emphasis on selling rather than giving away as the user asks.

As the person who contributed most of the substantive discussion to those two links... see my Answer here for the case of giving away executables with an academic license.