[Mono-devel-list] Mono's Random class and licensing

[Marcus]

The publisher's stance on copyright seems out of step with Free and open 
source software.

``Finally, there is the case where our source code, or source code based in 
copyright on our code, is to be made available to users. We consider these 
requests on a case-by-case basis, but the success rate of these requests is 
not high. . . Note that permission to redistribute will not, in any case, 
include permission to put any Numerical Recipes source code on computer 
bulletin boards, ftp areas, Web pages, or other publicly accessible 
archives.''

Given that copyright covers the *expression* of ideas but not the ideas 
themselves, it should be possible to write a code that does the same thing. 
It's unclear how much a program has to differ from the one in the book.

On Saturday 31 July 2004 2:13 pm, Ben Maurer wrote:

> > Even if Mono's source was not taken directly from Rotor's, there is a
> > problem: the code from Numerical Recipes does not permit source
> > redistribution:
> > http://www.numerical-recipes.com/com/info-permissions.html
>
> I had not noticed this. We are going to to contact the authors of
> NRinC and ask for necessary permission.  If  necessary, the algorithm
> can be written from one of the other available references.