NLSCON

[Pascal A. Dupuis]

Hello,

I've found on the following site: http://elib.zib.de/pub/elib/codelib/
a non-linear constrained optimisation routine, codename: nlscon.m.tar.

There were a few typos which are silently ignored by MatLab and cause
Octave to fail, as well as the need to adapt a construct to Octave
varargout syntax. No fundamental change thus, the test case gives the
same results in both environement, which are similar to the ones
accompagning the software. Patch attached. And the file problem.m is
encoded with Mac (\r) convention, requiring to be 'fixed' as:
recode mac problem.m

Now, about the licence: its belongs to a society whose name is ZIB,
and reads:

%    You may use or modify this code for your own non commercial
%    purposes for an unlimited time. 
%    In any case you should not deliver this code without a special 
%    permission of ZIB.
%    In case you intend to use the code commercially, we oblige you
%    to sign an according licence agreement with ZIB.


It's not open source (you may not redistribute), and restricted:
if you optimise, let's say an engine, using this package, and make
money from the optimised engine, is it a commercial use ? OTOH, this
product is not recent, because the log latest date is 2001.

So,
1) would it be interesting to add somewhere in the doc of
octave/octave-forge, a link to the base files and distribute the
required patch to make it work under Octave ?
2) would there be some interest if some octave maintainers contact the
authors of this software and try to convince them to put it under the
GPL ? Foreseen advantages: more scrutinity, more bugfixes, more
testcases, ...
3) are there other plans to support constrained, non-linear optimisation
techniques ?

TIA

Pascal

-- 
Dr. ir. Pascal Dupuis
K. U. Leuven, ESAT/ELECTA (formerly ELEN):  http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/
Kasteelpark Arenberg, 10; B-3001 Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium
Tel. +32-16-32 10 21 -- Fax +32-16-32 19 85

nlscon_octave.pat
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