On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:36 PM, Bruce Southey <bsouthey@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,
Really this is legal advice that you need from a lawyer (and I'm not
one). However, there are resources that can help you. I would suggest
first browsing Software Freedom Law Center's guide: "A Legal Issues
Primer for Open Source and Free Software Projects" which is available at
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/foss-primer.html. Also the
viewpoint on using BSD licenses in GPL code
http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/gpl-non-gpl-collaboration.html
.

If you use someone's code (or pseudo code for that matter) in some way
then you are bound by the terms of the code. Just looking at the code
(or pseudo code) is probably sufficient to the licensing terms to be
valid (especially with software patents involved). Here you are not
looking at the algorithm that might be controlled by some license but an
actual expression of that algorithm which is controlled by the authors
copyrights and consequently the license. Thus, the need for clean room
design (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design).

Regards
Bruce

Alan G Isaac wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008, Jasper Stolte apparently wrote:
>
>> I'm not quite sure how this licensing stuff works. The
>> algorithms are all public domain afaik, Octave made some
>> implementation of them in C++. The class structure of this
>> toolbox will be totally different, it's even written in
>> a whole other language. Is it forbidden for us to look at
>> how they implemented it without going to GPL?
>>
>
> Safest is not to look.
> And ask the author to release under BSD.
> (Sometimes s/he will.)
>
> But this seems an interesting case,
> if you accurately describe it.
>
> When you say the algorithm is in the public domain,
> does that mean that you know of a public domain
> implementation in code or in pseudocode?
>
> Cheers,
> Alan Isaac
>
>
>
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