The original Fortran source is copyrighted/licensed according to the "MIT license" below If you modify it, please clearly state the modifications to avoid confusion with the original program, and please cite the paper by Chow et al. (see README) if you use it in a publication. (These are polite requests, not legal requirements per se.) Copyright (c) 1994 University of Colorado at Boulder Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Permission to use the above license for this code was received in personal correspondence with the author, R. Schabel. A copy of this correspondence is included below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From schnabel@indiana.edu Sun Aug 26 21:30:53 2007 Date: Sun, 26 Aug 2007 21:29:55 -0400 From: "Schnabel, Robert B" To: stevenj@math.mit.edu Subject: RE: free/open-source licenses for your TOMS/739 quasi-newton software? Steven, I have to admit that I've not been asked to be this precise before, but what you propose is fine, and the copyright should be with Colorado. Bobby -----Original Message----- From: Steven G. Johnson [mailto:stevenj@fftw.org] Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2007 3:09 PM To: Schnabel, Robert B Subject: RE: free/open-source licenses for your TOMS/739 quasi-newton software? Bobby, Thanks so much for your response! That sounds great! It is important for the long term to be explicit about the legal permissions (the license). Is it okay to consider your code to be under the MIT (X11) license: http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php ? This is a simple, commonly used, permissive license that requires that your copyright notice be preserved, and disclaims all warranty and responsibility. (It's important to use a standard license, as unusual legal requirements often cause unforeseen difficulties. If you have additional preferences, it works well to attach them as polite requests to the license, rather than as legal requirements, as requests cannot conflict with anything or cause legal uncertainty. In practice everyone will honor reasonable requests.) Also, as for copyright notices, should I list it as: Copyright (c) 1994 Robert B. Schnabel, T. Chow, and E. Eskow. ? Or should I list it as copyright Indiana University? Thanks again for your help with these legal minutiae. Regards, Steven G. Johnson On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, Schnabel, Robert B wrote: > Dear Steve, > Thanks for asking. Yes, all that I ask on this is attribution if you > use the code intact, and if you modify it, a clear statement that the > resultant code is your modified code, not mine, and that the > responsibility is yours. > Thanks, Bobby > > -----Original Message----- > From: Steven G. Johnson [mailto:stevenj@fftw.org] > Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 12:09 PM > To: robert.schnabel@colorado.edu > Cc: louise-marie.davis@colorado.edu > Subject: free/open-source licenses for your TOMS/739 quasi-newton > software? > > Dear Prof. Schnabel, > > I'm in the Applied Mathematics faculty at MIT, and use a variety of free > local optimization packages in my work. I recently came across your > quasi-Newton software (from TOMS algorithm 739) and was very interested > in trying it out. > > However, I downloaded your source code from www.netlib.org, and I didn't > find any information on the copyright/license status of the code. Many > people ignore this, but under US copyright law the default (in the absence > of an explicit license statement) is very restrictive: no copying, > modification, or redistribution in any form are permitted. > > This is a problem for me because I not only use optimization code, but I > also write/distribute free/open-source simulation software for > electromagnetism and I like to include optimization routines with my > software. Also, I was thinking of putting together several nonlinear > optimization routines in a free package, for eventual inclusion in > free GNU/Linux distributions. None of this is possible without an explicit > license. > > I'm guessing that, by posting the code online, you intended for the code > to be used free of restrictions. It would be great if you could let me know > whether I can use/copy/modify the code under one of the standard Open Source > licenses; see the list at: > http://opensource.org/licenses/category > In particular, if you just want a simple permissive license the "MIT > license" (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php) is popular. > > (All of these licenses require attribution of the original authors to be > > preserved in the code, of course! And in any case I would certainly > cite you prominently in any package where I used your code.) > > I've released a lot of my own open-source scientific code (e.g. our FFTW > software for FFTs, which is used e.g. in Matlab) and would be happy to > discuss any concerns you might have over licensing/copyright issues. > > Regards, > Steven G. Johnson