<body>
- <h1><acronym>deal.II</acronym>-license for non-commercial use</h1>
+ <h1>The deal.II license</h1>
<p>
- For non-commercial purposes, the
- <acronym>deal.II</acronym> library has been placed under an Open Source
+ The <acronym>deal.II</acronym> library has been placed under an Open Source
license, in the sense advocated by the
<a href="http://www.opensource.org" target="_top">Open Source
Initiative</a>. You are thus free to copy and use it, and you have
free access to all source codes. However, <acronym>deal.II</acronym>
- is not in the public domain, it is property of the
- <acronym>deal.II</acronym> authors. Some parts of the library are by other
- persons, and are marked with their names. Also, note that parts of
- the files in the <code>contrib/</code> subdirectory are by other
- people, and are distributed under separate licenses; in particular,
- you will find parts of the <a href="http://www.boost.org/" target="_top">BOOST</a>
- library in this directory, and deal.II comes with a copy of <a
- href="http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/umfpack/" target="_top">UMFPACK</a>
- and one of <a href="http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/FunctionParser/" target="_top">FunctionParser</a>, courtesy of their authors. UMFPACK and FunctionParser
- are covered by their own licenses; please refer to the
- <a href="http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/umfpack/" target="_top">UMFPACK</a> and
- <a href="http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/FunctionParser/" target="_top">FunctionParser</a>
- webpages to read them. The files of these external libraries are not part of
- <acronym>deal.II</acronym>, but are only distributed together;
- please refer to the webpages of these projects for further
- information on license questions. In particular, if you do not agree
- with the conditions of the licenses of these external libraries, you
- may not use these components of our distribution.
- </p>
+ is not in the public domain, it is property of and copyrighted by the
+ <acronym>deal.II</acronym> authors, and there are restrictions on
+ its use. The legally binding license <a href="#license-text">is
+ given at the bottom of this page</a>.
+ Furthermore, deal.II distributions come bundled with some third
+ party software for which the deal.II authors do not own the
+ copyright. The licenses of these parts are discussed <a
+ href="#3rdparty">below</a>.
<p>
- <acronym>deal.II</acronym> is distributed under the Q Public License
- (or "QPL"), which qualifies as an <a
- href="http://www.opensource.org/osd.html" target="_top">Open Source
- license</a>. It is thus appropriate for people wishing to write
- software under the <a href="http://www.opensource.org"
- target="_top">Open Source</a> model where all source code to the
- software is made available to all users and can be freely modified
- and redistributed. QPL was originally developed by
- <a href="http://www.troll.no" target="_top">Troll Tech</a> for their
- Qt program library, but has since gained some support by other
- library authors as well.
+ In this document, as well as in the program files, the terms
+ <i>authors of <acronym>deal.II</acronym></i> and
+ <i><acronym>deal.II</acronym> authors</i> generally refer to the
+ principal authors of the library. These are presently Wolfgang
+ Bangerth, Guido Kanschat and Ralf Hartmann.
</p>
+
+
+ <h3>Restrictions on and commercial use of the library</h3>
+
<p>
- The QPL prohibits development of proprietary software. If you intend
- to develop commercial software based on <acronym>deal.II</acronym>,
- we are willing to negotiate a suitable agreement. Feel free to
- contact us in this case.
- </p>
+
+ <acronym>deal.II</acronym> is distributed under the <a
+ href="http://www.opensource.org/osd.html" target="_top">Open Source
+ license</a> called the <em>Q Public License</em> (or "QPL") listed
+ in full below. Essentially, an interpretation of this license is
+ that you can use the library free of charge for developing your own
+ programs. However, if you plan to distribute these programs to others,
+ certain restrictions are imposed by the QPL.
+
+ <p>
+
+ In non-legal terms, the license stipulates that if you want
+ to give your program to someone else in whatever form (including as
+ a binary executable), you have to make the entire source code of
+ your own program and all modifications to the deal.II library
+ available free of charge as well.
<p>
- For more information on the QPL, please see also the following
- links:
- <br>
-    
-    
- <a href="http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html" target="_top">Annotated version</a>
-    
- <a href="http://www.troll.no/qpl/plaintext.txt" target="_top">Plain text version</a>
-    
- <a href="http://www.troll.no/announce/qpl.html" target="_top">Announcement</a>
-    
- <a href="http://www.troll.no/qpl/comments.html" target="_top">Comments</a>
- </p>
+ We recognize that giving away the source code may be an
+ unacceptable restriction in a commercial setting. As the owners of
+ the sources, we are able to grant you a differently licensed version
+ of the deal.II library that does not contain this
+ requirement, and we are very much willing to negotiate the terms of
+ such a license. Please contact the authors of the library if you are
+ interested in commercial use of deal.II.
+
+
+
+ <h3>Referencing the library</h3>
<p>
- In addition to the terms imposed by the QPL, we have one restriction
- on the use of the library:
+ In addition to the terms imposed by the QPL, we ask for the
+ following courtesy:
</p>
<ul>
<li> Every publication presenting numerical results obtained with
- the help of <acronym>deal.II</acronym> shall state the name of
- the library and its principal authors (at present Wolfgang
- Bangerth, Guido Kanschat and Ralf Hartmann), as well as cite at
- least one of
- the papers by these authors on <acronym>deal.II</acronym>. This
- is the usual, fair way of giving credits to contributors to a
- scientific result, and using a complex programming environment
- like <acronym>deal.II</acronym> should be considered a
- significant contribution.
+ the help of <acronym>deal.II</acronym> should state the name of
+ the library and its principal authors, as well as cite
+ the canonical deal.II reference listed at the top of <a
+ href="publications/toc.html">the publications page</a>.
</ul>
+ This is the usual, fair way of giving credit to contributors to a
+ scientific result. In addition, it helps us justify our effort in
+ developing deal.II as an academic undertaking.
<p>
- In this document, as well as in the program files, the terms
- <i>authors of <acronym>deal.II</acronym></i> and
- <i><acronym>deal.II</acronym> authors</i> generally refer to the
- principal authors of the library. These are presently Wolfgang
- Bangerth, Guido Kanschat and Ralf Hartmann.
- </p>
+
+ We keep a <a href="publications/toc.html">list of publications
+ using deal.II</a>. Feel free to let us know about your publications.
+
+
+ <a name="3rdparty">
+ <h3>Parts of the deal.II distribution under a separate license</h3>
+ </a>
+
+ Some of the files in the <code>contrib/</code> subdirectory are by
+ other people, and are distributed under separate licenses. These
+ files are not part of the <acronym>deal.II</acronym> library, but
+ they are distributed together. They are generally available for use
+ in non-commercial academic settings. For commercial use and if you
+ want to distribute your codes, please consult the licenses of these
+ parts of the deal.II distribution.
+
+ <p>
+
+ In particular, these are libraries that we distribute in the
+ <code>contrib/</code> subdirectory, courtesy of their authors:
+ <ul>
+ <li> Parts of the <a href="http://www.boost.org/" target="_top">BOOST</a>
+ library.
+ <li> <a
+ href="http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/umfpack/"
+ target="_top">UMFPACK</a>. For the license, see <a
+ href="http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/umfpack/"
+ target="_top">UMFPACK</a>.
+ <li> <a href="http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/FunctionParser/"
+ target="_top">FunctionParser</a>. For the license see <a
+ href="http://www.students.tut.fi/~warp/FunctionParser/"
+ target="_top">FunctionParser</a>.
+ </ul>
<p>
- Please note that <acronym>deal.II</acronym> can interface with a number of <a
+ <acronym>deal.II</acronym> can interface with a number of <a
href="readme.html#external-libs">other packages</a> that you have to install
yourself. They are, of course, covered by their own licenses.
</p>
+
+ <h3>About the license</h3>
+
+ <p>
+ The QPL was originally developed by
+ <a href="http://www.troll.no" target="_top">Troll Tech</a> for their
+ Qt program library, but has since gained some support by other
+ library authors as well.
+ For more information on the QPL, please also consult the following
+ links:
+ <br>
+    
+    
+ <a href="http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html" target="_top">Annotated version</a>
+    
+ <a href="http://www.troll.no/qpl/plaintext.txt" target="_top">Plain text version</a>
+ </p>
+
+
+
<hr>
+<a name="license-text">
<h1 align=center>
+</a>
THE Q PUBLIC LICENSE
version 1.0
<br>