[SciPy-user] lowess in scipy?

[Robert Kern]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On 1/23/07, Robert Kern <robert.kern at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Gael Varoquaux wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 09:07:11PM -0600, Robert Kern wrote:
>>>> /*
>>>>  * The authors of this software are Cleveland, Grosse, and Shyu.
>>>>  * Copyright (c) 1989, 1992 by AT&T.
>>>>  * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
>>>>  * purpose without fee is hereby granted, provided that this entire notice
>>>>  * is included in all copies of any software which is or includes a copy
>>>>  * or modification of this software and in all copies of the supporting
>>>>  * documentation for such software.
>>>>  * THIS SOFTWARE IS BEING PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
>>>>  * WARRANTY.  IN PARTICULAR, NEITHER THE AUTHORS NOR AT&T MAKE ANY
>>>>  * REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE MERCHANTABILITY
>>>>  * OF THIS SOFTWARE OR ITS FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
>>>>  */
>>> Now I am being stupid, but what kind of license is that ?
>> It's substantially similar to the MIT license.
>>
>>   http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
>>
>> It's scipy-compatible, which is all that I care about.
> 
> SciPy allows such advertising clauses? 

What advertising clause? The documentation clause is not the same thing as an
advertising clause. Scipy's license has a similar one:

  b. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
     notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
     documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

If you want a good overview of how to interpret open source licenses and the
various legal issues surrounding them, I suggest Larry Rosen's book _Open Source
Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law_ available under an
open source license itself:

  http://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma
 that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had
 an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco