SciD (Was: Real Close to the Machine: Floating Point in D )

[Fawzi Mohamed]

On 2009-05-17 12:02:31 +0200, "Lars T. Kyllingstad" 
<public at kyllingen.NOSPAMnet> said:

> Don wrote:
>> Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>>> Sean Kelly wrote:
>>>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>>>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>>> Actually I seem to remember that "Numerical recipes in C" was widely 
>>>>>> criticized for having incredibly strong restrictions on the published 
>>>>>> code.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The license is, from my copy of the 1987 edition:
>>>>> 
>>>>> "Although this book and its programs are copyrighted, we specifically 
>>>>> authorize you, the reader of this book, to make one machine-readable 
>>>>> copy of each program for your own use. [...] Distribution of 
>>>>> machine-readable programs (either as copied by you or as purchased) to 
>>>>> any other person is not authorized."
>>>> 
>>>> I'll have to dig my copy out and see if it's any better.  Really, if 
>>>> the code can't even legally be used internally for an application 
>>>> developed by a team of programmers then the book is nearly worthless.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> I wouldn't go so far as to call it worthless. It may not be a 
>>> repository of freely usable algorithms, but it is a nice textbook that 
>>> covers a wide range of topics and methods.
>>> 
>>> A lot of the algorithms in NR are just their versions of classic (and 
>>> public domain) algorithms found freely available on NETLIB.
>> 
>> Yes, they basically grabbed algorithms from NETLIB and added their own 
>> bugs to them.
> 
> So really, the licence should say:
> 
> "Although this book and the bugs in its programs are copyrighted, we 
> specifically authorize you, the reader of this book, to make one 
> machine-readable copy of each bug for your own use. [...]"
> 
> :)
> 
> -Lars

The extremely restrictive license of numerical recipes means that one 
should *always* try to avoid using their version.
The book does a reasonable job at explaining some good algorithms (but 
often not the best/newest) but normally one can find good alternatives, 
or take original NETLIB algorithms.
The unresonable license of NR was one of the main reasons for GSL 
(which has its own set of problems).

Fawzi