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Copyright Status of Thermodynamic Properties?
orzetto writes "I work at a research institute, and programming models of physical systems is what I do most of the time. One significant problem when modeling physical processes is finding thermodynamic data. There are some commercial solutions, but these can be quite expensive, and to the best of my knowledge there are no open source efforts in this direction. In my previous job, my company used NIST's Supertrapp, which is not really that expensive, but is written in Fortran, and an old-fashioned dialect at that. As a result, it is a bit difficult to integrate into other projects (praised be f2c), and the programming interface is simply horrible; worse, there are some Fortran-induced limitations such as a maximum of 20 species in a mixture. I was wondering whether it would be legal to buy a copy of such a database (they usually sell with source code, no one can read Fortran anyway); take the data, possibly reformatting it as XML; implement a new programming interface from scratch; and publish the package as free software. Thermodynamic data is not an intellectual creation but a mere measurement, which was most likely done not by the programmers but by scientists funded with our tax money. What are your experiences and opinions on the matter? For the record, I am based in Germany, so the EU database directive applies."
FORTRAN awful? Give me a break.
</sarcasm>
What does the department line "consider-crown-copyright" mean? Is it a clever pun in relation to thermodynamics? Aside from any possible puns, I don't see how crown copyright could be relevant to Germany.
If the NIST program is the product of the work of US Government employees it is in the public domain. I would not be surprised if many of the commercial closed-source programs for the same purpose are based on it. In any case, tabulated data is not protected by US copyright so someone in the US could certainly do as you suggest.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I Recommend Talking To A Lawyer In Your Jurisdiction.
HTH
Let me tell you something: God speaks ForTran, and the guys who translated the bible from ForTran to Hebrew did a really really bad job.
The FAQ claims that the US government has a copyright on the material. This could be possible if the material was not directly generated by the NIST itself --- for example, they paid a contractor to generate it and it is considered a "work for hire".
The facts themselves probably can't be considered to be under copyright.
OTOH, I agree with a previous poster that you should consult a lawyer if you want to actually do anything which isn't sheeple-ish with the data.
I don't now about thermo, but I have the copyright to the speed of light...and I'm watching you.
Ask NIST how they'd feel about you reimplementing the whole thing in XML and C++ or Python or whatever and making that open source. Tell them they won't even have to pay you for it. One or two of the TPOCs at NIST may die of shock, but there's a very good chance they'll give you permission to do it.
I would assume that it would be difficult to sell a commercial solution for scientific purposes unless it is based on already documented and accepted data. Basing your scientific work on calculations made by a commercial solution with homegrown data would make it difficult to openly document your method to other scientists. So why not find the published version of those data instead of lifting them out of software?
But what do I know? I am an engineer, not a scientist.
In my work I do a lot of calculations of water and steam properties, and the available software I know of is strictly using the calculation methods published by IAPWS. So if I wanted to, I could buy the IAPWS documentation and make my own software.
A database is copyrightable. See http://www.bitlaw.com/copyright/database.html
Haha! That's pul fiction loesr
I think that the biggest problem isn't intellectual property, but the people who administer it. I don't think that the demand is particularly great. As such, there isn't a great incentive to release it freely. There are costs to administering such a large DB. Furthermore, nobody wants their name on a database of all the fundamental properties because in that data there are bound to be mistakes. Caveat Emptor! Also, while mixtures of hydrocarbons are common because of oil refining business, many solutions don't have property listings because they are simply unknown. I am working on a project which involves CO2 and seawater... seawater has many components which vary depending on your location on the planet. So while there is data, the validity of it may be in question, it depends on where the data was collected. It's a bit of a nightmare.
"no one can read Fortran anyway"...you must be new here. It certainly wasn't designed to the standards young engineers expect today, but given the limitations of processors back in the 60's to early 80's, it served its purpose. I did my first college CS class in Fortran back in '83. Anyone can write illegible code, but with a little effort, one could write fairly readable Fortran.
Just another day in Paradise
The law needs a major update anyway.
I can't find my copy of Supertrapp at the moment, but as I recall there is some strange wording in the license. It's definitely NOT public domain as asserted by the uninformed.
It's also not tabulated data. It's a collection of equations and empirical constants embedded in what may be the worst code I've ever seen.
It may be easier to track down the original papers and work from those, though that too is difficult as lots of the original work was published in obscure journals.
FWIW I am very comfortable w/ FORTRAN and prefer it for serious numerical work (default choice is C). I'm also quite skilled at interfacing FORTRAN to other languages.
I'm interested in working on such a project and have quite a bit of experience w/ the problem, though only limited experience w/ Supertrapp because it is so bad I tended to avoid using it unless I absolutely had to. Please send me an email so we can discuss more. rhb acm.org
Reg Beardsley
Granted, I graduated EE school in 1987, but every student was required to learn Fortran 77. Not sure how long that remained a requirement but I can honestly say Fortran was one of the easiest languages to learn. Saying it's not readable is laughable.
I worked on my first Fortran Prog in 1971 on a Honeywell DDP-124.
It was for controlling a Boeing 727 Flight Simulator.
I can still read fortran as can many people here. I'd bet many could read Cobol and Algol if pushed. Coral-66 baffles a lot of people though.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
People using this NIST data do it because it has NIST sign on it, so they don't risk being dependent on tabulated values from not exhaustively verified source. If you're rewritting the source code, you should take care to establish means by which users could check that data are unaltered with respect to what NIST servers contain. If you work for renowned institute, that should be easy, just store the database on your server and sync it with NIST, along with sources of data cited at NIST website.
As it comes to Fortran programming, it's optimal language for scientific computing. Modern dialects have some of the power of C (allocatable arrays, long subourtine names, free format code, modules, interoperability with C), but, what is preferable in scientific computing, programmer isn't encouraged to tinker with machine-specific stuff. Many existing codes are written in Fortran, e.g. powerful LAPACK library and many computational chemistry packages, so for many physicists/chemists/engineers Fortran is the only language they know and care of. Moreover, Fortran in recent years has gained parallel-programming functionality thanks to OpenMP (it's provided with features eqivalent to that in C/Cpp).
It looks like they are selling some database
http://www.nist.gov/srd/dblist.htm
And providing others for free,
http://srdata.nist.gov/gateway/gateway?dblist=0
Which one are you after? Something like this?
http://www.metallurgy.nist.gov/phase/solder/solder.tdb
I imagine if you derive approximation formulas to the figures, and publish them packaged as software you
would be able to license it whichever way you liked - sounds "transformative" to me. Might even qualify as proper research.
Would that work?
I don't think "it's only measurements" is enough to say they have no copyright. On the other hand, if the same
numbers appear in different places / articles then if you establish that "these are the numbers", and you make your
database in a different format, it would be a different story.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
It doesn't matter what the data describes, it matters who compiled the database. Read the EULA, or talk to your lawyers and possibly the lawyers of the people who sell the database. Asking for legal advice here is... not smart.
Also, why are you tossing in ``XML''? It isn't the best possible format for all things (for one because it isn't a format; merely a method to make your storage extremely verbose--the higher level structure is in the DTD, which is amazingly enough often missing for haphazardly thrown together``databases'') and from your description it isn't clear it is the best format for your application. As used here it's clearly a case of buzzworderitis. Something for you to think about.
I think you need to get over your dislike of Fortran and make use of the many good and modern Fortran compilers available to you, both freeware and commercial. Any of them has got to be a better solution than f2c - if you think Fortran is hard to read, that's nothing compared to the cryptic output of f2c, and then you're locked in to using the buggy and archaic f2c support library.
I am not familiar with the application you're using, but the limits you describe are almost certainly not due to the coding language chosen. As for programming interface, it's easy to call Fortran from other languages and, in most cases, to call other languages from Fortran.
One can write unreadable and unmaintainable code in any language. A big benefit of Fortran is that old code is still supported by modern Fortran compilers.
Sounds proprietary to me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It is a well thought out, fact-based response.
In the USA, facts are not copyrightable, this includes the facts in a database. Only expressive, original content is copyrightable, not the facts on which the expressions are based. Also, there is no originality in the practical ordering of a database, unless it can somehow be seen as rising above obviousness and can be considered creative.
Maybe you could crowdsource for the data points?
Write your open source software to work with the data, and set up a website or something where people can contribute data points? There would obviously by no guarantee on any particular data contributed, but you could have some provision to flag data as wrong or dubious and store multiple conflicting values until you sort out the conflict somehow?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
You are not the first to encounter this kind of problem. The traditional answer is to not mess with the Fortran, but to put a wrapper around it in the language of your choice and leave the Fortran internals alone.
From your description of the limitations of the Fortran code, I get the strong sense that this would be the best approach for you to take. It can be very difficult to tease out the reasoning behind some of those archaic Fortran constructions: they tended to be blends of methods to deal with hardware limitations that we don't have any more and also methods of dealing with computational limitations that are STILL present. E.g, when code was written to optimize buffering for a slow read-the-tape operation, it can be too easy to fail to see that it was also written to handle some kinkiness in the underlying differential expressions, or to exploit an edge case, or assure that some follow-on operation in another module would receive enough significant digits that its results would be better than garbage.
Just treat the Fortran library as a black box object and wrap the interface you want around it. You will find it easier to do, much easier to debug, and vastly easier to convince your colleagues that what you've done can be relied upon. You will also develop skills in wrapping old code for new purposes that could become an important part of your career.
Will
I'm a chemical engineer, and part of my job is to put together physical property packages for our simulator. I have no idea if you can legally do this by adapting something from another database, but I would contribute some of the information I have if you can get through the legal stuff.
Mainly, I rely on NIST's JANAF publication for thermodynamic data (inorganics only), the DIPPR database, and the Yaw's Physical Property Handbook. For binary VLE data DECHEMA is the best references Of these, JANAF is freely available (in horrible PDF format) while the other two would require some sort of membership or purchase. These are mainly in the form of equations or data tables. From there, we simply bring it into excel or sometimes some curve refitting routines and then on to the simulator, which takes the equations directly. We're members of AIChE which gives us access to the online version of these databases.
DIPPR was the result of a major effort of a consortium of companies who needed this data. I believe most of the serious big petrochemical companies are members of DIPPR. You will be trying to recreate this work, which is doable, but I think it will be harder than you think. I agree that this data shouldn't be locked away as tightly as it is.
Interesting, something to think about.
...they specialize in international copyright law. While a US Citizen may be able to "copy" or "rewrite" code US taxpayers paid for, don't assume other, non-contributing (non tax-paying to the US) foreigners can openly copy and redistribute code that is technically the property of US citizens. Personally, I don't care as your topic is of little interest to me, but unless someone is attorney/lawyer in these copyrights, I wouldn't listen to anyone here.
Architectural Renderings
As a lawyer. Duh. The lawyer will probably tell you that copyright applies.
Empirical models of thermodynamic properties are definitely protected by copyright. There is a high-value market for these models, and different models of the same thermodynamic process will evaluate differently so it is a valuable creative product rather than a mere description of reality. For fields where tiny improvements in efficiency generate big cost savings, you want to use the most accurate model available where "most accurate" will be a function of the use case.
Thermodynamic property models are not measurements of reality, they are mathematical models of a physical process derived from empirical data. They are what you use to predict reality when it is not possible or practical to measure it. Turning the empirical data points into continuous functions is a creative step and the value of the creative step is in minimizing the divergence between the model and reality over as broad a range as possible. There are companies that specialize in producing and selling ultra-accurate thermodynamic property models.
As a chemical engineering student in college I had trouble finding thermodynamic data for my senior project (vinyl chloride production through oxychlorination of ethane) due to the tight lids on the research. I understand the reason for this though because it takes a lot of money to figure this data out.
However, thermodynamic properties are those of nature. It would be like NASA obtaining a copyright for a map of the stars. If it is legal it shouldn't be.
NIST presumably charges on a cost recovery basis. They keep the data updated (latest version appears to be v3.2 as of 2007) and have to pay for the due diligence of keeping up with the scientific literature. Presumably either the DB (STPLIB2) or the documentation or separate publications describes how the data are accumulated and vetted. The software appears to permit the values to be updated by users (undoubtedly also familiar with the appropriate journals and research) in between releases.
You could consult the same papers and accumulate the same data. (And don't forget the subtle physical algorithms and numerical techniques embedded in the code.) This would not be a trivial exercise. More to the point, NIST exists precisely to serve as a reliable source of such information. Few other organizations have the resources to gain such trust. Should your customer trust you as much as NIST?
There is a frequent disconnect in scientific programming between the science and computing requirements. Many of the comments here focus on the niceties of programming, but neglect the underlying scientific reasoning. It isn't enough to get an answer - or even the answer - one must also construct a chain of deduction from the peer reviewed scientific literature to the resulting decision-making (for whatever purpose).
As far as choice of programming language, mature programmers appreciate the characteristics of each language like the bouquet of fine wines. Some languages are indeed "corked", but FORTRAN is not one of them. Think of a fine old brooding cabernet. C is a cheerful chianti, suitable for most situations - ideal (by design) for none.
The technical issues here have nothing to do with programming, per se, but rather system architecture. Clearly what is needed amounts to a small multi-platform relational database - mySQL or what have you - along with a portable library with multi-language bindings to allow the algorithms to be accessed from tailored applications. The NIST could then continue to sell their own general purpose application. The marketing issue is whether it would turn out that everybody would continue to use the NIST's application even given its apparent limitations.
But the real issue is sociology. One presumes that "Thermophysical Properties of Hydrocarbon Mixtures" implies a resource of interest to "Big Chem". Perhaps the reality is just that Exxon and Shell and BP and 3M and Monsanto and BASF create and maintain their own proprietary codes for such purposes?
Yeah, you wish, you efing tro!!
I would simply change your last step
- and publish the package as free software
with
- and give back the restructured database to the copyright owner for them to publish just the data free from copyright
If that doesn't sound right to them, then suggest that you will put it on a web page only accessible to yourself, leak the web link to Google and after it's indexed say "sorry for the mistake"...
Most quality assurance processes also are "measurements" (with possibly a following remedy if non-conformant) but do you think that consulting companies would consider that their "measurements" should be available for free to amyone? (I do...)
Can I put a spell on those who can't spell?
Your wheels are loose and they're losing their grip, good you're there.
That's a legal question. The answer to that question might seriously complicate your life if you get it wrong. What would possess a person to ask this of Slashdot instead of contacting a lawyer? Better yet, why would a German expect a USA-based Web site to be familiar with the nuances of German (or EU) copyright law? I'm trying to picture a situation where I'd contact a German online forum to ask for legal advice pertaining to American law and I just can't come up with anything.
I suppose next we'll see an Ask Slashdot which says "hi, I'm a diabetic and I forgot how much insulin I am supposed to inject myself with, please advise." And I'll have to scroll down significantly to see a partly-buried comment where someone finally suggests that perhaps he should be asking a doctor...
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
As an alternative, a possibly more sane approach to your problem would be to proceed more in the fashion of the scientific world. Contact either NISTs SRM program, or Marcia Huber (the scientific lead on this SRM). You can find the contact information on the end of the page you posted in your link.
What this will allow you to do, if you choose to use the SuperTrapp database and codebase, is establish a working relationship with NIST. More than likely you will still have to pay the cost recovery fee, but that's something that can be worked out between the NISTs lawyers, the US Dept of Commerce, and your company.
To avoid the complexities of international copyright law, you may also wish to contact the Deutsches Institut fur Normung which is Germany's equivalent to the US NIST. Whether they have thermodynamic data to sell or not though is a different matter.
I warned the project manager that sure go ahead and use the data as a basis for programming but not for the production program.
A couple of months later, the competitors lawyers appeared and (cough) out of court (cough) settlement.
Never did find out how much it cost "my" software house...
In the end they had to employ a gaggle of impoverished undergrads to build their own DB.
So, be very very careful. It might be a good idea to *ask* if you can re-use the data - often it's possible for non commercial purposes...
Andy
The one reason that programs are maintained in Fortran after all this years is that Fortran is wagonloads better for optimization. The compiler can take a lot more for granted than when using C with its pointers and one-dimensional arrays.
So going via f2c costs performance. Try using extern "fortran" or similar to pull the code in.
slashdot knows more than most IP lawyers. You have to remember, lawyering is essentially about either telling you what case law precedent has established (like don't rob banks), or arguing for your side, not about "truth" or "right and wrong". Most lawyers are more the type that will take the money, then figure out how to argue the way you want... they don't do good with "advice" not tied to rulings in court. Ask the right question and you'll pay the lawyers a bunch less money... nobody wants THAT!
In regards to the question, he's looking to pull government funded data out of a program. Considering most countries in Europe allow the state to charge for everything it can and that they have "database aggregation" "copyrights". His plan would probably get him sued.
So now that most of slashdot would agree on that outcome.... what other resources are available to obtain his desired outcome. This is where the slashdot crowd helps because they're in different countries and chances are pretty good somebody will know what government or research office he should talk to... There are still huge chunks of government services that aren't documented anywhere on the internet. Corporations that know who has the info freely available love to keep their sources opaque so the industry has to go thru them to get free information, and in many cases that means "handshake" deals so key offices never have time to get their web pages posted properly. You'd be surprised how many government services are still known only by the posting outside the office door (in the basement just above the beware of leopard sign) or maybe the phone book if you're lucky.
People never learn do they? Slashdot is news for nerds, not Q&A with lawyers.
SEE A LAWYER. Don't expose yourself to a lawsuit based on the unauthorized practice of law so common on Slashdot. seriously. Perhaps you could contact NewYorkCountryLawyer directly - he probably knows enough and might be able to help you out.
CASE IN POINT: everyone focuses on copyright but I wouldn't be surprised if the software has a license agreement that binds you to not copying the data - that's called a contract. Someone in Wisconsin tried that and got sued (ProCD v. Zeidenberg) and guess what? HE LOST. That may or may not be the case, but illustrates the problems with your approach to getting legal advice.
Don't trust armchair lawyers especially when Copyright is concerned. There are so many myths out there you'd be surprised. (One that persisted until recently was: If I'm not doing this for commercial profit, its ok! WRONG)
The practice of law is very fact intensive. No armchair lawyer and not even a real lawyer can answer your legal question on the basis of just your half paragraph "blurb." There are a lot of hidden factors that a lawyer is trained to look for and ask about.....
I know lawyers can be expensive, and often have a bad rep, but they are highly trained individuals.
Uh, let's see now. You're going to expect all the idiots on the Internet to make precise measurements of (for example) the energy released in some chemical reaction at 357 Celcius temperature and 4.435 atmospheres of pressure?
Are we reality-based here?
What you want is a particular kind of crowdsourcing called "science". It tends to cost money because some people's thermomenters don't go up to 357C, so they need to buy better ones.
So far as I know (I've not seen the most recent version) all the work in Supertrapp has been published somewhere. However, there is no comprehensive bibliography of the basic source material.
I find the term "database" rather strange as I would not describe it as a database, but the authors chose to call it that. There's a similar program called Refprop which is much better but doesn't cover everything that Supertrapp does.
Why this is really difficult:
The fundamental problem for a pure fluid is intrinsically difficult. Google "Van der Walls" to get some basic idea.
Supertrapp attempts to treat mixtures. This is much harder for a binary mixture and for arbitrary numbers of components becomes combinatorially complex.
No measurements have ever been made for many possible combinations of fluids of interest. Interactions among the components are difficult to predict.
Proprietary codes for major companies (e.g. big oil where I spent my career) tend to use either gross simplifications (i.e. Batzle-Wang, Han- Batzle) or are developed for a limited subset of the larger problem (i.e. process control problems for particular mixtures).
The equations are a nightmare of complexity. After making the basic lab measurements, hundreds or even thousands of possible systems of equations are evaluated to see which best predicts the measurements (cf. R. Span, "Multiparameter Equations of State", Springer 2000).
For those who think OO & inheritance are the answer, consider a class structure that attempts to mix fish, cars, plants, asteroids, & God in French, German, English & hieroglyphics.
I've spent almost 20 years supporting large (e.g. 500,000+ line) FORTRAN codes for major oil companies. Supertrapp is probably the worst code I've seen.
I considered doing this myself several years ago, however, after looking at the code, I realized it's a major undertaking just to figure out what the equations are from the code. It's also very difficult to create a sensible front end for the grammar implicit in the user input specification.
Reg Beardsley
HAHAHA, "slashdot knows more than most IP lawyers"
You're joking right? You have to be..... because we all know how accurate slashdot is, especially on legal issues! ::rollseyes::
If you are serious, then your ignorance is dangerous in that it is compounded by false confidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_legal_protection_of_databases
Uh, let's see now. You're going to expect all the idiots on the Internet to make precise measurements
No.
I'm thinking that if there is a community interested in this kind of software then *those* people may already have this sort of data already lying around somewhere.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
IANAL but, the issue of the copyright status of databases has come before the Supreme Court. The issue was: is an alphabetized list copyrightable? The court said no, because the database itself did not contain originality, it just was pure information. The key fact here is whether or not the database you describe is original, or it just contains facts. From wikipedia: "The ruling of the Court was written by Justice O'Connor. It examined the purpose of copyright and explained the standard of copyrightability as based on originality. It is a long-standing principle of United States copyright law that "information" is not copyrightable, O'Connor notes, but "collections" of information can be. Rural claimed a collection copyright in its directory. The court clarified that the intent of copyright law was not, as claimed by Rural and some lower courts, to reward the efforts of persons collecting information, but rather "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (U.S. Const. 1.8.8), that is, to encourage creative expression. Since facts are purely copied from the world around us, O'Connor concludes, "the sine qua non of copyright is originality". However, the standard for creativity is extremely low. It need not be novel, rather it only needs to possess a "spark" or "minimal degree" of creativity to be protected by copyright. In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor states that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself. If Feist were to take the directory and rearrange them it would destroy the copyright owned in the data. The court ruled that Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all subscribers to its service, which it was required to compile under law, and that no creative expression was involved. The fact that Rural spent considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to copyright law, and Rural's copyright claim was dismissed." . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service . http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=499&invol=340
You show yourself as a snob, Sir. Probably most any serious geek - including this one - will understand Fortran just fine. And given a little bit of time and money it can be rewritten into pretty much anything else since most other languages are supersets of Fortran.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
This would be easy for steam properties. XSteam: http://www.x-eng.com/Download_XSteam.htm They explicitly state that their functions are open source, substantiated by the fact... you can download the code real easy right there. I've been using their Excel visual basic code. No, they don't have any for Fortran, but their VBA stuff is not hard to figure out, and I've actually been able to change the code and use it in Fortran. It's not that different. If you desperately need free Fortran steam tables, I wouldn't even have a problem sharing what I have. As for the steam tables themselves, XSteam claims to use IAPWS IF97, which seems pretty thoroughly public domain. They have other options available on http://www.iapws.org/ as well. ...But now for Hydrocarbon Mixtures, I'm not sure what to tell you. A lot of people here are talking about the formulation of the tables constituting significant intellectual work, and that's true, but there is public domain government work and open source solutions for steam tables, and considering that the data for hydrocarbon stuff is also clearly public domain, I don't know. I'm just as lost as you are.
I don't know if you're trolling or just grossly misinformed, but that's not even close to correct. Lyrics are the copyrighted creative works of the person/people who wrote them. "Changing one word" does not allow someone else to then distribute the lyrics legally. That would be considered a "derivative work," the creation of which is a right provided to copyright holders under copyright law.
Slashdot is an international website; while hosted in the US, there seems to be at least about the same amount non-US readers as US readers. (I believe there even was some statistics shown that indicated that there were more non-US readers, but I may be mixing up websites WRT those.)
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Anyway, I think you should have an agreement with those, who collected database entries at least. Somebody paid for a time to enter all this data, or paid to people who scanned and arranged that data into the database.
All the formulation for the prediction of water properties are published by International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS) so that they can be used. It is often important to use exactly the same correlations so that that all the thermodynamic data are self-consistent. Therefore the formulations are standardized by an international body. I do not think that the use of this formulae is in any way restricted because such restriction would defeat the very purpose - standarization. See http://www.iapws.org/ for the collection of the current formulations. There may be a restriction for a particular implementation (computer program) or sets of tables ( "lookup tables" and interpolation are often used for performance). Not sure. Hope someone starts an extension to implement these kind of things in Gnumeric. Cheers. Ephraim the horse.
The main perf advantage of Fortran however was that it could automagically make use of vector machines.
It's either copyrighted or it isn't. Nothing to do with the citizenship of the reader, ever. At least I have never seen anything like this. The only thing that comes close is reciprocity clauses where another country's copyrights are only recognized if it recognizes the other country's, but nothing based on the country of the *user*, just the work.
What is the big deal? Fortran II was my first language (IBM 1620) and was very straightforward. It could have been algol or some other strange dialect.
You're so wrong. Your comparison is flawed.
This issue is clearly relevant to many Slashdot readers. The reason to bring up is to solicit suggestions from interested readers, many of whom may have relevant experience that they may be willing to share. The legal question is very important so it must be stated. The OP did *not* ask Slashdot to *answer* that question. Not all useful information gathering related to a legal question is legal advice.
Imagine Stingdot, a forum for people with long-term medical conditions. On such a forum it would be perfectly appropriate for someone who has been diagnosed with diabetes to ask a question "Managing insulin injections" that really revolves around a concrete medical question, namely, how much insulin to inject and when. The goal of raising that subject would not be to obtain an answer to the question instead of asking a doctor, but rather, to seek comparisons with other people's cases, how they manage in practice, how critical to be of the doctor's orders, etcetera.
QFT.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if SashDot knows more about IP than most laymen, and than quite a few lawyers who do not practice IP law.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
/. is not an US only web-site. However, you're absolutely right with your advice to ask a lawyer. Also I would recommend to read the license which comes with the data and code. And I want to add: Fortran is a readable language and it is not really hard to learn.
The Supertrapp program from NIST will soon be fully superseded by the REFPROP program. This newer program calculates REFerence PROPerties of nearly 100 fluids from equations of state in a user-friendly environment. The program can be found at www.nist.gov/srd/nist23.htm. Not all of the fluids that were available in Supertrapp are available in REFPROP, but our current work will soon make them all available, at which point the Supertrapp program will no longer be available for purchase.
To clarify several issues that have been brought up here, although the word "database" is used to describe these products, they are in reality only programs that use equations of state to calculate thermodynamic properties. The equations of state are developed using high accuracy data as explained in Lemmon, E.W. and Jacobsen, R.T, "A New Functional Form and New Fitting Techniques for Equations of State with Application to Pentafluoroethane (HFC-125)," J. Phys. Chem. Ref. Data, Volume 34, Number 1, pp. 69-108, 2005. There is no data in the databases, but this generic word is used to describe all of the standard reference data products sold by NIST.
Concerning the copyright, users of the programs should be aware of the Standard Reference Data Act, PL 90-396, Section 6, which states "The Secretary may secure copyright and renewal thereof on behalf of the United States as author or proprietor in all or any part of any standard reference data which he prepares or makes available under this Act." The SRD Act is online at http://www.nist.gov/srd/publiclaw90-396.pdf
If you have further questions about the Refprop or Supertrapp programs, please feel free to contact me.
Eric Lemmon (Eric.Lemmon@nist.gov)