TILU and Maxima



Dear Professor Fateman,
Dear Stavros,
Dear Colleagues,

Please, permit me to mention also (with much delay) 
the Mathematica (Wolfram Research) Web page

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/about.html

by Eric Weisstein's on the "World of Mathematics" 
(MathWorld) including the paragraph (and links of course)
at the end

> "For information about the recent lawsuit filed by CRC Press
> which resulted in the extended shutdown of MathWorld, please
> read the author's note on the subject. The full set of legal
> documents in the case is also available. Please note that help
> from readers in continuing to protect MathWorld as a free 
> website is greatly appreciated" 

Therefore, I am in favour of the first alternative suggested
by Stavros (as the easiest possible)

> 1) Ask CRC Press for permission.  I guess UCB has tried this?

and this is possible (in my opinion) provided an appropriate
acknowledgement to CRC will be present.

With respect to the third possibility,

> 3) Develop a clean integral database from public domain sources,
> including pre-1914 works (or whatever the date is now), 
> government works (Abramovitz and Stegun), etc. . . .

I feel it's better that the present already excellent integration 
algorithms in Maxima be further improved instead (and this 
perhaps requires less effort).

Please, accept my apologies for such a delayed intervention.

With my best regards,

Nikos

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Stavros Macrakis" <stavros.macrakis at verizon>
To: "Richard Fateman" <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu>
Cc: "maxima" <maxima@www.ma.utexas.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, February 11, 2003 1:30 AM
Subject: RE: [Maxima] TILU and Maxima


> RJF says:
> 
> > Tilu incorporates some data that CRC Press presumably owns [namely]
> > the computerized form of about 800 integrals from CRC table of
> > integrals.
> >
> > I suppose one could type them in again from some other source
> > (math formulas themselves, like recipes, cannot be copyrighted, I
> > think). But in fact we didn't.
> 
> It is undisputed that mathematical facts cannot be copyrighted (or
> patented).
> 
> The status of CRC Press's tables (on paper or in TeX) is less clear,
> under various legal doctrines.
> 
> Apparently UCB is comfortable with the TILU web service being based on
> the CRC Press TeX files.  Is this because UCB's lawyers have determined
> that using the Tex sources in this way to provide a Web service is not
> an infringement, or perhaps because UCB has gotten a letter from CRC
> Press authorizing this use?
> 
> There seem to be four basic approaches to getting the TILU database (or
> something like it) into Maxima legally:
> 
> 1) Ask CRC Press for permission.  I guess UCB has tried this?
> 
> 2) Force the legal issue.  Hire a good lawyer to analyze the situation,
> and if s/he believes that using the TeX sources is OK, do it.  But be
> prepared to be sued by CRC Press if they don't agree.  (Who will pay the
> legal fees? -- is this something that, say, the EFF would be interested
> in?)
> 
> 3) Develop a clean integral database from public domain sources,
> including pre-1914 works (or whatever the date is now), government works
> (Abramovitz and Stegun), etc.  If the 1914 CRC handbook had exactly the
> same tables, I wonder if the TeX version can claim to have a more recent
> copyright (not at all clear).
> 
> 4) Develop a clean integral database from a combination of public domain
> and copyrighted sources.  Doing this right would require some legal
> guidance.
> 
> Of course, I am not a lawyer, and we'd want a competant copyright
> lawyer's advice on this.
> 
>         -s