copyright question

[Ben Abbott]

On Feb 29, 2008, at 3:15 PM, Jonathan Stickel wrote:

> Ben Abbott wrote:
>> On Friday, February 29, 2008, at 11:13AM, "Jonathan Stickel"
>> <jjstickel at vcn.com> wrote:
>>> I have written some data smoothing code that borrows heavily from
>>> code published as supplemental information in Analytical Chemistry,
>>> an ACS journal.  I would like to submit my code to Octave (as part
>>> of a package in octave-forge).  Here is what the ACS website says
>>> about the copyright:
>>> "Electronic Supporting Information files are available without a  
>>> subscription to ACS Web Editions. All files are copyrighted by the
>>> American Chemical Society. Files may be downloaded for personal
>>> use; users are not permitted to reproduce, republish, redistribute,
>>> or resell any Supporting Information, either in whole or in part,
>>> in either machine-readable form or any other form. For permission
>>> to reproduce this material, contact the ACS Copyright Office by
>>> e-mail at copyright at acs.org or by fax at 202-776-8112."
>>> I plan to email ACS about this, but is there a suggested way to ask
>>> permission?  My thought is to GPL my code submission and cite the
>>> publication.  Do you think ACS will allow this, or should I ask
>>> for something else?
>>> Thanks, Jonathan
>> Jonathan,
>> I'm intrigued.
>> I occasionally run into claims of copyright issues with regards to
>> published algorithms. Can you post a reference to the paper in
>> question, so that I may take a look?
>> Thanks Ben
>
> Of course.  The paper is Anal. Chem.; 2003; 75(14) pp 3631 - 3636.   
> The url for the supporting information (including code) is
>
> http://pubs3.acs.org/acs/journals/supporting_information.page?in_manuscript=ac034173t
>
> I have already emailed the author, and he has given me his personal  
> permission to make a derivative work.  This is the nature of science  
> after all!
>
> Jonathan

Jonathan,

There isn't so much code in the reference. Are you looking to "borrow"  
something as short as the lines below?

	m = numel (y);
	E = speye (m);
	D = diff (E, d);
	W = spdiags (w, 0, m, m);
	C = chol (W + lambda * D′ * D);
	z = C \ (C′ \ (w .* y));

Please confirm.

If so, I know of a prior example that may be of relevance.

Beyond the "prior example", I expect you'd like to introduce a  
specific dependent variable, say "x"? ... rather than relying upon the  
indices of y?

One last question, is there any license associated with the  
publication, or is the concern of the copyright?

Ben