[PD-dev] Porting, copyright and licensing

[Marc Lavallée]

Le 4 Janvier 2006 10:42, Marc Lavallée a écrit :
> Le 4 Janvier 2006 05:51, Jamie Bullock a écrit :
> > Hi,
> >
> > Whilst we are on the subject of licensing and copyright, I have a
> > related question. If a section of code is ported into another
> > programming language, does the ported code qualify as a new piece of
> > software or a modification of existing software? I ask this, because
> > clearly it has implications for who owns the copyright to the ported
> > code.
> >
> > For example, I have written an external that uses a Fast Cosine
> > Transform algorithm originally implemented in Fortran, with the code
> > released under the ACM license
> > (http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/softwareCRnotice.html).
> > Clearly, if a port into C (as a PD external) is classed as a
> > modification of the existing Fortran code, then I have to license the
> > external under the ACM also. That is, unless the author agrees to
> > relicense the code under the GPL. However, if the PD external is
> > classed as an entirely separate piece of software, just using the same
> > algorithm, could it be relicensed without consent?
> >
> > Does anyone know the law/etiquette regarding this?
>
> The ACM license is a bit like a the CC attribution/non-commercial
> license. I'm not sure it can be considered a free software license (it's
> not listed on gnu.org), but I believe it can be used along with free
> software. For commercial use, you must contact the author and negociate a
> licensing agreement. For non-commercial use, you can distribute the
> source or binaries, even modify and/or integrate the source to your
> project, but the original code must be indentified as being the property
> of ACM. So I think you can licence your part as GPL and use the ACM part
> as instructed by the ACM license.

Jamie, I checked your external (http://www.puredata.org/Members/jb/fct/view)
I see that  you are already releasing everything with the original ACM 
license. I think your port of the original FORTRAN routine 
(http://www.netlib.org/toms/749) does not belong to the ACM. 

I'm curious about the Fast Cosine Transform; is it faster than a DCT or a 
FFT? Why not using the fftw library?
--
Marc