1. UCB lawyers have other things to worry about than whether
it is OK for some faculty member to (possibly) violate the
copyright of some publisher.
2. CRC Press is not a university press or a professional
society press. It is run for profit. I am reasonably
certain that if someone approached them to say "we want
to use your property" that they would not
say "go ahead and use it free".
3. Regarding Weisstein's legal problems: it seems to me
fairly clear that he sold CRC Press something that he
didn't intend to sell them. I think he failed to read the contract
he signed (or worse, read it and didn't believe it).
Wolfram appeared to encourage him in some way to violate
this contract, but eventually came to some agreement
with CRC. I find this somewhat amusing since Wolfram
threatened to sue me when I wrote a Mathematica language
parser, claiming he owned the "commands" of Mathematica.
He eventually dropped the matter.
I think that the right thing to do is type into a computer
the integration problems (NOT the solutions) in some suitable
form, e.g. Mathematica, Macsyma, Maple, Mupad syntax. Then
make a table of those inputs and the corresponding outputs
(with simplifications applied). This should cover much of
the usual tables. I doubt that Wolfram claims he has a
copyright on the answers produced by Mathematica.
The known integration ANSWERS that cannot be done by any of these
systems will have to be entered by hand. These are mostly
definite (improper or parametric) integrals with nice compact solutions
not found by algorithms, or ones where the answers are not in
closed form (e.g. indefinite summations, limits, other integrals).
The amount of work is really not that much, assuming that many
of the answers come out in a form that is good enough for
further use.
On the other hand one can ask the question: if the algorithm
can find the result, why bother to put it in a table?
(a) The table lookup is faster
(b) The result may be simpler because a human made some
clever choice of simplification commands
and of course
(c) some entries in the table cannot be done by the computer
algorithms (yet).
Nikolaos I. Ioakimidis wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
>