Re: copyright question

[Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso]

On 29/02/2008, Jonathan Stickel <address@hidden> wrote:
>  My thought is to GPL my code submission and cite the publication.

The way copyright works is that you can't choose the copyright terms
for anything other than an artistic work you've created yourself. So
the ACS code that you borrowed from isn't free for you to license it
under GPL terms. You may, however, ask ACS or the copyright holders of
that code to put it under a free license. 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.

> 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.

HTH,
- Jordi G. H.