Re: copyright question

[John W. Eaton]

On 29-Feb-2008, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:

| On 29/02/2008, Jonathan Stickel <address@hidden> wrote:
| >  My thought is to GPL my code submission and cite the publication.
| 
| Be extemely diplomatic how
| you request this. People who write copyright statements like the one
| you quoted tend to distrust any dissemination of information and tend
| to think in terms of property, theft, and such nonsense.

Yeah, so I'd recommend not stating your case this way.  :-)

It sounds as though the ACS software copyright statement is similar to
the one used by the ACM.  Ugh.  Let's bottle up all the science so
that it can't really be freely shared.  At the very least, these
people should define what they really intend when they say
non-commercial.

| > Do you think ACS will allow this,
| 
| It's worth a try. You need to request new license terms for the code
| you want to put under Octave. Give them options like BSD-like or GPL,
| but make sure you make it clear that the code you want to contribute
| to Octave must be under GPL-compatible terms. In particular, they must
| not disallow commercial use, which is often a GPL-incompatible
| restricition people add.

You might also make it clear that since the GPL allows anyone to
redistribute, it prevents proprietary derivative works, which might be
sufficient for them, since they may be confusing proprietary and
commercial (I mean, how else would you use the software in commerce if
you don't make it proprietary?  :-/ ).

jwe