[AstroPy] message from SOFA chair

[Scott Ransom]

Hi All,

Catherine has asked me, as a new SOFA board member and astropy-list 
member, to send this to the list.

Scott

--------------

          To all participations in the astropy e-mail forum

Our records show that various emails to me as Chair of the IAU SOFA
Board did not receive a reply.  This happened for reasons outside my
control and I am very sorry.

The fault lies with the spam filtering arrangements at my institution,
which have to comply with the strict IT security policies that all UK
Government establishments operate.  All automatic spam filters suffer to
some degree from false positives, and the actual failure in this case
was in the manual monitoring that was supposed to detect such cases.
Measures have since been taken to make this less likely in the future.

On the subject of the SOFA license conditions, our Board member Patrick
Wallace is continuing discussions he had on this topic last year, which
resulted in changes to the license that enabled the Debian release to
proceed.  Recent emails, which unfortunately were delayed by the spam
filter problems, show that further discussion is needed, and Patrick is
now in touch with Perry Greenfield, STScI Science Software Branch lead.
The nub of the problem is that SOFA software has to address two
conflicting requirements: (i) the insistence by free software groups
that users should not be constrained in any way and (ii) the need to
prevent "counterfeit" versions coming into circulation.  The second
point is vital because SOFA software represents IAU standards and indeed
is cited in other standards such as IERS Conventions.


Catherine
Chair, IAU SOFA Board
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
HM Nautical Almanac Office
United Kingdom Hydrographic Office
Admiralty Way
Taunton TA1 2DN
Catherine.Hohenkerk at UKHO.gov.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

-- 
Scott M. Ransom            Address:  NRAO
Phone:  (434) 296-0320               520 Edgemont Rd.
email:  sransom at nrao.edu             Charlottesville, VA 22903 USA
GPG Fingerprint: 06A9 9553 78BE 16DB 407B  FFCA 9BFA B6FF FFD3 2989