license for code published in articles
Is code that is published verbatim inside a paper (not as attachment) license restricted? The Journal of Statistical Software publishes code under GPL. Does GPL also apply to source snippets or functions that are included in the text of the article, or is there a fair use assumption on the text of the article? example: Kolmogorov distribution for two-sided ks-test paper: http://www.jstatsoft.org/v08/i18 George Marsaglia, Wai Wan Tsang, Jingbo Wang: Evaluating Kolmogorov's Distribution, Journal of Statistical Software Vol. 8, Issue 18, Nov 2003 discussion: http://projects.scipy.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/2004-July/002182.html Josef
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 14:17, <josef.pktd@gmail.com> wrote:
Is code that is published verbatim inside a paper (not as attachment) license restricted?
Yes, of course, provided that the code is otherwise copyrightable.
The Journal of Statistical Software publishes code under GPL. Does GPL also apply to source snippets or functions that are included in the text of the article, or is there a fair use assumption on the text of the article?
Including code in scipy does not fall under fair use, so that's neither here nor there. You can ask the authors for permission, if you like, but it's best just to read the paper, and write new code. -- Robert Kern "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco
<snip> but it's best just to read the paper, and write new code.
-- Robert Kern
Thanks for the clarification. I was just wondering whether we have to stop reading the paper, when the authors start to show the code after finishing with the description of the algorithm (for clean room development). Josef
One solution is to blur your eyes so you can't read text but can distinguish between fixed width font and variable-width, cross out the code with a sharpie magic marker, and then read the paper. Damian On 11/24/08, josef.pktd@gmail.com <josef.pktd@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip> but it's best just to read the paper, and write new code.
-- Robert Kern
Thanks for the clarification.
I was just wondering whether we have to stop reading the paper, when the authors start to show the code after finishing with the description of the algorithm (for clean room development).
Josef _______________________________________________ Scipy-dev mailing list Scipy-dev@scipy.org http://projects.scipy.org/mailman/listinfo/scipy-dev
-- Sent from my mobile device ----------------------------------------------------- Damian Eads Ph.D. Student Jack Baskin School of Engineering, UCSC E2-489 1156 High Street Machine Learning Lab Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~eads
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 14:17, <josef.pktd@gmail.com> wrote:
Is code that is published verbatim inside a paper (not as attachment) license restricted?
Yes, of course, provided that the code is otherwise copyrightable.
The Journal of Statistical Software publishes code under GPL. Does GPL also apply to source snippets or functions that are included in the text of the article, or is there a fair use assumption on the text of the article?
Including code in scipy does not fall under fair use, so that's neither here nor there.
You can ask the authors for permission, if you like, but it's best just to read the paper, and write new code.
Puting it the other way round --- when writing a paper I should explicitely state, that all code is BSD, then people should not be afraid of looking at it, right? Ondrej
On Tue, Dec 2, 2008 at 19:19, Ondrej Certik <ondrej@certik.cz> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Robert Kern <robert.kern@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 14:17, <josef.pktd@gmail.com> wrote:
Is code that is published verbatim inside a paper (not as attachment) license restricted?
Yes, of course, provided that the code is otherwise copyrightable.
The Journal of Statistical Software publishes code under GPL. Does GPL also apply to source snippets or functions that are included in the text of the article, or is there a fair use assumption on the text of the article?
Including code in scipy does not fall under fair use, so that's neither here nor there.
You can ask the authors for permission, if you like, but it's best just to read the paper, and write new code.
Puting it the other way round --- when writing a paper I should explicitely state, that all code is BSD, then people should not be afraid of looking at it, right?
You might have to arrange such matters with the journal, which might get sticky. Probably the best way is to have tarballs of the code in the paper available for download with a LICENSE.txt. But I have no direct experience negotiating with journals, so take that for what it's worth. But in general, people shouldn't be afraid of looking at code snippets in papers. If the code is short enough to be in a paper, verbatim, it is likely short enough to not be copyrightable by itself. And you probably don't want to copy the code directly, anyways. -- Robert Kern "I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco
participants (4)
-
Damian Eads -
josef.pktd＠gmail.com -
Ondrej Certik -
Robert Kern