pmint copyright WAS integral of 1/(x^4+3*x^2+1) fails

2008/6/16 Stavros Macrakis <macrakis at alum.mit.edu>:
> There is a series of issues here:
>
> 1) Is there a valid copyright on pmint?
> 2) Assuming there is, what does it cover?
> 3) Assuming it covers the Maxima translation, can we legally include
> it in our share file?
> 4) Assuming we cannot legally include it, what are the implications of
> including it anyway?
>
> I am not a lawyer, but I think I do understand copyright law moderately well.
>
> 1) I am pretty confident there is a valid copyright on pmint.
> Software can be copyrighted, there is a prima facie valid copyright
> notice on it (not that that is required), and everyone seems to agree
> that Bronstein wrote it. The fact that the code is posted to the INRIA
> Web site has no effect on the validity of the copyright. Indeed, the
> *whole point* of copyright is that you can publish something widely
> and still hold rights to it.

There is copyright statement at the top of Bronsteins program:

# The Poor Man's Integrator, a parallel integration heuristic
# Version 1.1 ---  May 10, 2005  (c) M.Bronstein and INRIA 2004-2005

I think that Robert already said he contacted INRIA but got no response.

> a) Obviously the easiest and safest way is to get a statement from
> INRIA licensing pmint under a license compatible with our distribution
> -- not necessarily compatible with GPL, since it is distributed as a
> separate program in share.

I agree that this would be the best way to include it into maxima.
INRIA is also involved in the development of Scilab and the next
version will be released under CeCILL license
(http://www.cecill.info/index.en.html) which is compatible with GPL,
so there is good chance they would allow pmint to be released under a
similar license.

Anyway, pmint is a nice program but the integrator in maxima is still
much more powerful. Maxima does not loose much if it does not include
pmint.

-- 
Andrej