[SCILAB] License of routine rpoly.f

[Sylvestre Ledru]

Hello Olivier,

Le lundi 01 février 2010 à 14:49 +0100, Olivier Robert a écrit :
> Hello,
> I'm contacting the debian maintainers of the Scilab package to get
some
> clarifications about the license of a particular routine used in
Scilab.
> 
> ./scilab-5.1.1/modules/polynomials/src/fortran/rpoly.f
> 
> According to the header included into the file, the code is
> copyrighted by the INRIA and placed under the CeCILL license.
> It is also stated that the code is from NETLIB : TOMS/493. In fact it
> is a modified version of the original code available from
> http://www.netlib.org/toms/493.
Indeed. It was a mistake, I forwarded that upstream and Vincent Couvert
removed 
this issue
( http://gitweb.scilab.org/?p=scilab;a=commitdiff;h=298062c4634227b92f44910b3d47552b023cb292 ).


> According to http://www.netlib.org/toms/ the "use of ACM Algorithms is
> subject to the ACM Software Copyright and License Agreement".
> Further information is given on the page
> http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice/
> The licence grants the right to execute, copy, modify and distribute
> the code and the binary only for non-commercial use. But for
> **commercial use, you have to get the authorisation from the
authors.**
> I'm quite confused by this situation. What licence should I read ?
Well, this ACM license issue is still unclear. Old ACM algorithms were
in a kind of public domain but they updated their license policies and
try to make them retroactive.
But anyway, yes, there is an issue here. Do you know a free
implementation of this algorithm ?

Thanks for pointing this out,
Sylvestre