[SciPy-Dev] Adding solvers to scipy.integrate [Was: A step toward merging odeint and ode]

[Ralf Gommers]

<moved to scipy-dev>


On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 10:22 AM, Fabrice Silva <silva at lma.cnrs-mrs.fr>wrote:

> Le lundi 20 août 2012 à 22:04 +0200, Ralf Gommers a écrit :
> >
> https://github.com/FabricioS/scipy/commit/f867f2b8133d3f6ea47d449bd760a77a7c90394e
>
> > This is probably not worth the cost for existing users imho. It is a
> > backwards compatibility break that doesn't really add anything except
> > for some consistency (right?).
>
> Hi Ralf,
> Ok concerning this point.
>
> Hi Fabrice, sorry for the slow reply.

>
> In addition, I have been looking to suggest additional solvers,
> essentially simpler scheme, that would thus allow to easily switch
> between "complex" (lsode, vode, cvode) and basic schemes (Euler,
> Nicholson, etc...)
>

Sounds like a good idea. I think though that for each solver added there
should be a gain in performance for some problems, whether that's speed,
accuracy, robustness or something else. Adding a solver for educational
purposes or completeness only wouldn't be all that useful.


> I came across some code on the Montana Univ.'s Computer Science dpt:
> http://wiki.cs.umt.edu/classes/cs477/index.php/Creating_ODE_Solver_Objects
> and asked Jesse Johnson (the responsible for that class) what is the
> license for that code. Here is his answer :
>
>         Any thing that you find on those pages, you may use. However,
>         I'm not sure how to go about officially giving the code a
>         particular license. Can I add a license to the wiki, stating
>         that it applies to all the code therein?
>
>         PS It is fantastic you're doing this. I've often thought that
>         scipy.ode could use some improvements.
>
> He is cc'ed of this mail, could anyone concerned about scipy license
> requirements and more generally in code licensing answer him ?
>

Hi Jesse, thanks a lot for contributing your code.

As for the licensing question, I think the best would be to either add a
license at the bottom of each page, or in the code itself. Adding a page
somewhere on your wiki saying "license X applies to all code in this wiki"
is in principle enough, but it may be hard to find for readers. And if they
can't find a license, they have to assume they can't reuse your code. As
for the license itself, it would be good to be explicit ("public domain" or
"BSD" for example). Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.

Best,
Ralf
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/scipy-dev/attachments/20120918/86f52840/attachment.html>