On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Rich Bowen wrote: > OK, folks, here's a heads up on the issue of license for the Calendrical > Calculation code. The "commercial" statement below is not encouraging, > but I'm sending him the licenses, and hoping for the best. If someone > wants to step in and give me good advocacy words to use when I get his > response, I'd be delighted to ghostwrite them.
A couple points to make. - The book is pretty damn useless without permission to implement the _algorithms_ for any purpose whatsoever. And in fact, I for one will probably be returning my copy unless I hear otherwise. - Make sure they're clear on what they're asking. For example, do they really want to limit use of the _algorithm_ described on page 129 (9.5)? Why? - If they think they can copyright the _algorithms_, as opposed to the code that implements them, they're almost certainly wrong under US law. Same with patents. This is especially true when the algorithm at hand is not a new discovery of their own (which these can't be, really). Inasmuch as the code is nothing more than the algorithm at hand, the same also applies to the code (but this is a sticky legal issue at the moment). But it sounds like they're not even trying to distinguish between algorithm (mathematical formula described in book) and code (implementation of said algorithm detailed in appendices). While I think licensing their code the way they do is incredibly lame (again, why publish it if they don't want people to use it?) let's just try to get them to make a statement about the algorithms. - I for one will not give them _ownership_ of my code. That's insane. They are of course welcome to redistribute it freely, because it'll be licensed in a way that allows that. You can point out that's a rule for the whole project. - We're not asking for non-transferrable rights to use the code commercially. We're asking for the right to implement the algorithms under the Free Software license of our choosing. - Point out that at least some portion of this code is _already_ Free Software. See http://savannah.gnu.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs/emacs/emacs/lisp/calendar/ Also, just to clarify. The chances that this code will be distributed _with_ Perl (the core) are minimal. -dave /*======================= House Absolute Consulting www.houseabsolute.com =======================*/
