On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Robert Dodier <robert.dod...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Nov 25, 5:02 pm, Rob Beezer <goo...@beezer.cotse.net> wrote: >> On Nov 25, 3:35 pm, Donald Alan Morrison <donmorri...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> > "Abramowitz and Stegun: Handbook of Mathematical Functions" is another >> > interesting topic source you mentioned. It is very nice that it's >> > free to view. I'm surprised that it's just scanned images....someone >> > could have run it through OCR, then LaTeX. >> >> The "Digital Library of Mathematical Functions" is the follow-on to >> Abramowitz and Stegun. >> >> http://dlmf.nist.gov/ > > The DLMF is not the same as A&S in at least one respect: > whereas A&S is a work in the public domain, DLMF is copyrighted. > > Now one might suppose that the DLMF is a work of a federal > agency (NIST) and therefore cannot be copyrighted. > The arrangement is this: NIST contracts with the authors > (not NIST employees, I gather) to write it, then the authors > assign the copyright to NIST.
Is that legal? In any case, I've heard that version. I have also heard another version: NIST is one of the few (possibly only) fed agency which has an exception to the "public domain" rule for official govt work. (True) However, the exception is for a very specific purpose and it isn't at all clear to me that NIST meets that provision in the copyright law. I am not a lawyer but also I am very biased in favor of openness, so my feeling on what NIST has done (copyright-wise) to the DLMF) could very well be inaccurate. > > best > > Robert Dodier > > -- > To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to > sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel > URL: http://www.sagemath.org > -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org
