RE: Can we freely use AMOS in Octave?

[ACM Permissions]

Hello Jordi,

Thank you for your inquiry and for explaining your dilemma.  Please forgive the 
delayed reply and be assured that ACM does not forbid commercial use of the 
algorithms, but you do require a commercial use license, which is an addendum 
to the ACM Software License Agreement referenced in the discussion included in 
your email.  

The Commercial license may be modified as needed to suit Coursera's 
requirements as it regards GPL distribution, however the fee will need to be 
adjusted accordingly.

You will note that ACM Policy also requires the original author's consent to 
your use as a professional courtesy. 

Let me know if you have any further questions.


Regards,

Deborah Cotton
Copyright & Permissions
ACM Publications
212.626.0652
address@hidden 


-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden [mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2012 11:39 AM
To: address@hidden
Cc: Octave Maintainers List
Subject: Can we freely use AMOS in Octave?

Hello, regarding this discussion:

    
http://octave.1599824.n4.nabble.com/Fwd-OctDev-libcruft-amos-nonfree-Bessel-code-in-Octave-td4632360.html

It has been discovered that since 1998 we have been using the 
dubiously-licensed AMOS in GNU Octave, a free numerical environment mostly 
compatible with Matlab. Can you confirm that this is acceptable? We require 
being able to use the AMOS code in a GPL-compatible way:

    http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WhatDoesCompatMean

In particular, we cannot use AMOS if you insist on forbidding commercial use. 
Note that the GPL allows commercial use, so adding such a restriction is 
GPL-incompatible.

Please carefully consider all of Octave's users, such as the thousands of 
Coursera students who have and are currently taking gratis online courses and 
using Octave for their computations. If you cannot confirm that using AMOS in 
Octave is acceptable, our users may suddenly lose features they've been 
enjoying since 1998.

Thanks,
- Jordi G. H.
  GNU Octave developer

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