[petsc-dev] (no subject)

[Matthew Knepley]

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 2:08 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:

>
>    Matt,
>
>     You have included a bunch of HSL code in PETSc with uncertain
> copyright information; it is not clear that we can include it in PETSc.  In
> hslmc64.c is the following incomplete fragment of copyright/license
> information:
>
>
> /* COPYRIGHT (c) 2007 Science and Technology Facilities Council */
> /*           and Jacko Koster (Trondheim, Norway) */
>
> /* History: See ChangeLog */
>
> /* **********************************************************************
> */
> /* CCCC LAST UPDATE Tue Nov 26 03:20:26 MET 2002 */
> #undef __FUNCT__
> #define __FUNCT__ "HSLmc64AD"
> /* *** Copyright (c) 2002  I.S. Duff and J. Koster                   *** */
> /* *** Although every effort has been made to ensure robustness and  *** */
> /* *** reliability of the subroutines in this MC64 suite, we         *** */
> /* *** disclaim any liability arising through the use or misuse of   *** */
> /* *** any of the subroutines.                                       *** */
>
>
>
>
> No mention of how it is licensed. A web search discovered
> http://opensees.berkeley.edu/WebSVN/filedetails.php?repname=OpenSees&path=%2Ftrunk%2FOTHER%2FSuperLU_DIST_2.5%2FSRC%2Fmc64ad.c which has a very strict outrageous license
>
>
>
>
> * CCCC COPYRIGHT (c) 1999  Council for the Central Laboratory of the */
> /* CCCC Research Councils.    All rights reserved. */
> /* CCCC PACKAGE MC64A/AD */
> /* CCCC AUTHORS Iain Duff (i.duff at rl.ac.uk) and Jacko Koster (
> jak at ii.uib.no) */
> /* CCCC LAST UPDATE 20/09/99 */
> /* CCCC */
> /* *** Conditions on external use *** */
>
> /* The user shall acknowledge the contribution of this */
> /* package in any publication of material dependent upon the use of */
> /* the package. The user shall use reasonable endeavours to notify */
> /* the authors of the package of this publication. */
>
> /* The user can modify this code but, at no time */
> /* shall the right or title to all or any part of this package pass */
> /* to the user. The user shall make available free of charge */
> /* to the authors for any purpose all information relating to any */
> /* alteration or addition made to this package for the purposes of */
> /* extending the capabilities or enhancing the performance of this */
> /* package. */
>
> /* The user shall not pass this code directly to a third party without the
> */
> /* express prior consent of the authors.  Users wanting to licence their */
> /* own copy of these routines should send email to hsl at aeat.co.uk */
>
> /* None of the comments from the Copyright notice up to and including this
> */
> /* one shall be removed or altered in any way. */
>
>
>    Do you have any evidence that can be included in hslmc64.c that it is
> now covered by a more reasonable license than this old one and thus could
> be included in PETSc source? More license information needs to be included
> in the file if the source code is to be included in PETSc.  Does PETSc
> source really need to include this crappy old Fortran code anyways?
>

This http://www.hsl.rl.ac.uk/licencing.html tells me that I am not doing
anything wrong until we release :) I want this there for testing. Since
it is already in SuperLU, I will just move it into a package that we can
download with configure. I wanted to do this anyway since I will
need to use SLEPc too.

   Matt


>    I note that both superlu and trilinos include this code. In
> superlu_dist they include the full license as listed above but then
> directly violate the license by distributing the source code with the
> SuperLU_Dist package.
>
>    Thanks
>
>    Barry
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
experiments lead.
-- Norbert Wiener
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