   Portal Engine Legal Goof
  Just have read the thread on sellability of portal tools.In one of the posts there was a link to a portal library.I followed it...Good people, am I smoking crack or the following was really written by somebody from UNC:QuoteCopyrightThe pfPortals library is a *public domain* software package and may be freely used, modified, and distributed, provided *certain conditions are met*. The following copyright appears in the source code and applies to this documentation as well: /***************************************************************************  *Copyright 1995 The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  All Rights Reserved.*  Permission to use, copy, modify and distribute this software and its  documentation without fee, and without a written agreement, is  hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and the  complete text of this blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahEnd quoteEmphasis mine. So take your best guess: is this a public domain or copyrighted? :DEspecially funny looks the 'All rights reserved' clause after all those 'permissions' :Dedit: The link: http://pfportals.cs.virginia.edu/pfPortals.htmlPlease note that my post in no way relates to the original poster of the portal topic. Thanks.Yours, BugBane.[edited by - BugBane on February 17, 2004 6:59:55 PM]
  The way I read it, UNC keeps the copyright, but if you abide by the terms (keep copyright notice, etc), you can use it, sell programs based on it, etc. Many open source licenses have similar terms.Though it does contradict the "public domain" mention. One of the authors teaches here, I can ask him next time I see him.   “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”    — Brian W. Kernighan (C programming language co-inventor);  Oh that would be cool. Thanks. (What a coincedence! ) ;quote:Original post by BugBane  Oh that would be cool. Thanks. (What a coincedence! )   Not really a coincidence, since I believe the post you''re referring to is one of mine. He''s the reason why I heard of pfPortals ;  Ok, so it''s not ''public domain'' as the copyright is retained by the authors, whom you must give credit to (especially if you write a research paper based on it), but aside from that. It would seem you may otherwise use it as you wish.Of course, a copy of SGI Performer can prove helpful if you want to use the library as-is.   “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”    — Brian W. Kernighan (C programming language co-inventor);  Ok then. Thanks for clarification!quote:One of the authors teaches here, Looks like your professor needs to urgently take Law 101 (if he hasn''t already) ;  It doesn''t say your project has to be open source though.Why don''t I see a link to download the source?   ___________________________________________________________Where to find the intensity (Updated Feb 10, 2004) ;quote:Original post by amish1234  It doesn''t say your project has to be open source though.Why don''t I see a link to download the source?   Well, it''s not the GPL. And that''s just the documentation page.   “Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”    — Brian W. Kernighan (C programming language co-inventor)