copyright question

[Jonathan Stickel]

Ben Abbott wrote:
> 
> 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?
> 

There is a lot more code in the supplemental information:  entire 
m-files with help text and implementations with x and y data (not just 
y).  I have used a good bit of that.

There is no license, just the quoted ACS copyright that also covers what 
is posted as supplemental information.

Thanks,
Jonathan