Prof. Brent, Regarding your minimization code on netlib, a question has arisen as to whether it, or code derived from it, can be used in a project such as scipy (http://scipy.org) that has a BSD-style license (http://scipy.org/License_Compatibility). The question arose in the following mailing list conversation: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.scientific.devel/11726 Thank you for any clarification you can provide, and thank you for having provided the code in the first place. Eric Firing