Hello,

I would like a clarification on the license regarding my specific use case. I develop a software to calibrated some detector geometry and it needs a minimization function.

For now it is for our own lab use, (our lab bought the 3rd ed. book) but we may eventually want to share the code (compiled or with source) with other users or eventually sell it.

Apparently it would not be permitted by the license I found with the source. Does the license only apply to the source code provided on the CD ?

If I fully rewrite the code provided in the book, may I freely use my implementation of the algorithm ?

Why choosing such a constraining license ? It makes it all useless ... from an engineer point of view.

Hello.

I think that most of your questions should be answered at http://www.nr.com/licenses/redistribute.html.

In brief, we will likely give permission to redistribute compiled code, but not source code. These license terms apply regardless of whether you got the code from the book, from the CD, or from the electronic subscription.

In general, copyright law does not protect ideas, but only the specific expression of those ideas. So, if you write your own code using the ideas in the book, then the specific expression belongs to you. However, if you do this while looking at the NR code, it is likely that you will unintentionally copy some specific expression choices not mandated by the underlying ideas, which would be a copyright violation. So, we certainly don't recommend this. There are many other good source code libraries besides Numerical Recipes, both commercial and free. It sounds like you should be using one of these.

Numerical Recipes is intended primarily as a text and reference book, and only secondarily as a code library. It is not our intent to be a source library for commercial applications.