🚀 go-pugleaf

hughett@chaplin.med.upenn.edu (Paul Hughett) writes:

> Eleftherios Gkioulekas (lf@amath.washington.edu) wrote:
> [deletia]
> 
> : Finally, it is important to note that numerical recipies are not free
> : software, so it is not appropriate to discuss them in gnu.misc.discuss,
> : unless you want to discuss the nature of their license terms. 
> : If you write a program that depends on numerical recipies routines
> : you can not legally redistribute these routines. 
> 
> Not precisely true.  You are free to distribute source of your own
> program, with instructions for the users to compile and link with
> their own copy of Numerical Recipes.  You could also distribute unlinked
> binaries of your program, although I'm not sure why you should want
> to.  What you cannot do is distribute either linked binaries, or copies
> of the NR source code.

Yes, as a technical matter, you can do that. It is even better to
instruct the users to compile NR as a library and have your program
simply link it in. You can use Autoconf to check whether the user-created
library actually contains the needed routines. If your program uses GPL code, 
then you can't do any of that. Also, if you've needed to modify a NR routine, 
then you're really out of luck because:
1. I am not sure if you are allowed to do the modification in the first
   place.
2. I am sure as hell you can't redistribute it.
So if you can't redistribute it, who can? You are stuck.

If you BUY an NR license, you are given permission by the
license of NR to distribute linked binaries that use NR routines,
under certain restrictions (basically they don't want your binary
to be a front-end entry point to calling the NR routines, they have
a weird way of requiring that). I am not sure if you have this
right if you only bought the book.

They spend an extreme amount of webspace explaining all of this
in excruciating detail. They really are very uptight about their
copyrights and licensing. They do make a few allowances if you
purchace a license separate from getting the book but these
allowances still don't make NR free software.

> 
> : This is particularly onerous if you want your program to be free
> : software, or if you need to _modify_ their routines.
> 
> Regrettably true.  I find that I am using NR less and less, for exactly
> this reason.
> 
> : In general be very cautious of books with published source code. Always 
> : review the copyright status of their code before using it in projects that 
> : you might want to share with your collegues. In almost all cases that I know 
> : of, such books give you no rights. The copyright terms are always stated 
> : behind the book's titlepage. In Numerical Recipies, you are granted
> : a License which is discussed in an unnumbered section in the beginning
> : of the book. That License is extremely restrictive however. If no permissions
> : or License are mentioned, this means that you are given no rights at all.
> : In that case, it might even be illegal to copy the source code from the book 
> : to your computer by hand. This is very sad because, as far as I am 
> : concerned it makes a big chunk of these books useless to me.
> 
> 
> Many of the routines available in Netlib have the same problem.  Either
> a restrictive license, or no stated license terms, in which case you
> cannot assume that you have any rights to the code.  You might be able
> to make the case that intentional public posting of the code implies
> certain rights to use, but I wouldn't want to try that without a
> laywer.

Agreed. I believe that the Netlib routines used in GNU Octave, like LAPACK and
FFTPACK and a few others can be considered safe, and mixable with GPLed
code. If you don't believe in the GNU Octave maintainer, then you can
certainly get a lawyer into it.

There may also be the issue that at the time when many of the Netlib stuff
was written, you didn't have a copyright if you didn't register for one.
But that would only work if these routines were never modified by anyone 
before the year that the automatic copyright was legislated 
(anyone know when that was?)

> 
> Paul Hughett

Numerical Recipies are a prime example of what RMS meant when he said
(paraphrasing) that "copyrights encourage the creation of software, but not 
the kind of software that society needs". 

Elef (IANAL but I am ANAL)
-- 
Eleftherios Gkioulekas                |  "The truth points to itself"
http://www.amath.washington.edu/~lf/  |                    --Kosh