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Recently, teachers and students at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) and Harbin Engineering University (HEU) have been unable to use MATLAB, and this news has quickly become a hot topic of concern.Recently, on social networks like Zhihu, some HIT students reported receiving notifications about the deactivation of their legitimate software. After negotiating with MathWorks, the company that develops MATLAB, they learned that the relevant licenses had been suspended due to the US government’s entity list.
After inquiring with MathWorks’ US customer service, someone received the response: service cannot be restored.We also learned about the situation faced by HIT students using legitimate MATLAB in recent days: on June 6, while using MATLAB, a deactivation notification suddenly popped up, and clicking on deactivation still allowed usage. However, when starting MATLAB on June 7, it displayed an invalid license, and the webpage could not log into HIT’s domain account. After resetting the password, the email showed:
Then someone consulted MathWorks and the technical support staff at HIT, receiving the following response:
This is a frustrating situation. One student stated that as a paid legitimate software user, there may still be limited hope for future use. However, the ban on MATLAB may just be the beginning, and more software from the US may face similar situations.The recent experiences of HIT and HEU are somewhat similar to Huawei’s inclusion on the US entity list last year. Due to US sanctions, Huawei smartphones have been unable to use Google services and a series of software services since May of last year.If we observe the entity list published by the US Department of Commerce on May 22, we find that it currently includes 13 Chinese universities: Beihang University, Renmin University of China, National University of Defense Technology, Hunan University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Sichuan University, Tongji University, Guangdong University of Technology, and Nanchang University.These universities cover a wide range of strong disciplines, including aerospace technology, materials, instrumentation, computer science, engineering, and artificial intelligence. Preventing these universities from engaging in academic exchanges with the US, or even normal teaching activities, is a limitation on China’s high-tech development.MATLAB: An Essential Tool for Engineering StudentsFor today’s engineering students, MATLAB is an indispensable tool, second only to Office in necessity. If MathWorks continues to enforce the ban on HIT and HEU, thenany papers published by these schools cannot include data, graphs, or tables obtained using MATLAB—regardless of whether you are using a legitimate or pirated version.MATLAB is a commercial mathematical and scientific computing simulation software produced by the US company MathWorks. It is a high-level technical computing language and interactive environment used for algorithm development, data visualization, data analysis, and numerical computation, with the initial version released in 1984. The software includes dozens of toolboxes covering various disciplines such as mathematical computation, modeling and simulation, electronic communication, mechanical engineering, automotive aviation, power energy, economics and finance, and biomedicine. It is currently available in enterprise, campus, and home versions, with millions of engineers and mathematicians worldwide using MATLAB.
Simulation images generated using MATLAB series tools.Although MATLAB was originally designed for numerical computation, its optional toolboxes use the MuPAD symbolic engine, which has symbolic computation capabilities. The additional package Simulink adds multi-domain simulation and model-based design for dynamic and embedded systems.As MATLAB plays an increasingly important role in campus teaching practices, major universities in China, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Xi’an Jiaotong University, have successively introduced MATLAB campus versions, and HIT is no exception. The first class of some university courses teaches students how to install MATLAB.Previously at HIT, students could download and install the latest version of MATLAB using their university email—on March 15, 2019, HIT announced the launch of the MATLAB campus version, providing personal registration for single-user versions of MATLAB software to all faculty and students. Internally at HIT, MATLAB is widely used in various colleges and research institutions, including the School of Aerospace Engineering, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, School of Computer and Software Engineering, and the Institute of Mathematics.
Image source: HIT official website.
Afterward, HIT maintained close contact with MathWorks, inviting company employees to hold lectures to explain the usage and operation processes of MATLAB to students. In March 2020, HIT released the MATLAB campus license update guide. Everything was supposed to develop along the normal direction of school-enterprise commercial cooperation, but MathWorks ultimately could not resist the government’s mandatory ban.MathWorks Employee: Forced to Enforce the Ban Due to CircumstancesThe ban on domestic students using MATLAB has had a greater impact on domestic research institutions due to the entity list. For the developers of MATLAB—MathWorks—their employees also expressed absolute disagreement.On Zhihu, a user claiming to be a MathWorks employee stated: The ban on HIT is due to the entity list issued by the US Department of Commerce, and MathWorks, as a US company with military application products, can only comply with the regulations; this is not an initiative of MathWorks.The so-called ban only means that they cannot provide technical support and future business cooperation; the previously sold legitimate licenses should still be usable.The employee also stated that MathWorks has always opposed trade wars, and company executives have clearly stated at quarterly meetings that the embargo on Huawei would harm human technological development and cooperation. However, as a US company, MathWorks can only be forced to enforce the ban.Netizens expressed their inability to imagine how work would proceed without MATLAB. If MATLAB is banned for a long time, the currently conceivable alternatives are more open-source languages like Python and Julia.
However, some pointed out that while MATLAB can be replaced by other languages, finding alternatives for Simulink simulation is quite difficult.
Weibo blogger @毛毛虫 Claire also commented on the ban of MATLAB for HIT and HEU. She pointed out that while it is possible to use pirated versions privately, if a paper is submitted without authorization from the institution using data, graphs, or tables generated by MATLAB, there may be a risk of being sued.
Reference content:https://www.zhihu.com/question/400551624
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