Re: [science-iwg] [EXTERNAL] Re: Implementation statistical methods

[Jay Jay Billings <jayjaybillings@xxxxxxxxx>]

Foss,

Seeing what you have found in the Copyright history, I would personally be satisfied that those versions are fine. I wouldn't be comfortable with any of the later versions until they had the same certification though.

One thing that bothers me with the way this has been released is that the export control card is being played/shown, but as far as I can see the authors did not make it clear that there is actually no more to worry about here than selling banana or thumbtacks.

Thanks for digging in and ascertaining the actual status!

Jay

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 3:06 PM, Friedman-Hill, Ernest <ejfried@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I work for Sandia Labs as well, and although I don’t actually know the folks involved here,  I do know the relevant Sandia corporate perspective.

I can tell you that the language about the irrevocable license and about export control is standard Sandia boilerplate, applied to all products early in their lifecycle. The actually relevant bit with respect to export control is at the bottom of the file https://github.com/algorithmfoundry/Foundry/blob/master/CopyrightHistory.txt, where it gives the copyright grant notices. Versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 have all been reviewed by Sandia’s export control office and found to have “no specific export issues,” otherwise known as status EAR99. Most commodities are in this export control category: Microsoft Word, bananas, thumbtacks, Linux.   But if you as a US citizen ship bananas or Linux CDs to an embargoed or sanctioned country, and the US government wishes you hadn’t, well, then suddenly you’re in trouble, and should have asked for permission first. 

The bottom line is that by including this language, Sandia is stating that it is not indemnifying you against complying with U.S. Export laws. Although the software is believed to be free of export control restrictions, if the government comes after you, Sandia is not going to defend you. Sandia will say this with respect to any product it produces, and the truth is, pretty much every U.S. company says (or should say) the same thing. Ask any international business lawyer: they are likely to agree.

Now, all that said: I’m neither advocating or discouraging your use of this library, but I’d make that judgement based on it own merits.

From: Jay Jay Billings <jayjaybillings@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: Science Industry Working Group <science-iwg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2015 at 2:08 PM
To: Science Industry Working Group <science-iwg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [science-iwg] Implementation statistical methods

Obligatory Disclaimer: That is my personal opinion and not necessarily the opinion of ORNL or any other entity associated with the DOE.

Jay

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 2:07 PM, Jay Jay Billings <jayjaybillings@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Andreas,

This is tricky. I personally recommend that you find another library. I originally wrote a much longer email, but deleted it because it is sufficient to say that this is not the type of export controlled software you want to work with. There is nothing wrong with export controlled software in general, but in this case I believe that they are doing a kind of bare-minimum, maybe not completely legit job of explaining the situation and not properly releasing the software.

jm2c,

Jay

On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 6:35 AM, Andreas Klingberg <andreas.klingberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

I would like to get some comments or advice regarding the implementation of some statistical procedures.
We aim to implement some multiple comparison methods (post-hoc tests) such as Tukey's HSD, Tukey-Kramer or Fisher-Hayter test. Obviously, we would prefer not to rewrite the algorithms.
These methods are not available in the Apache Commons Math library. Do you know of any Java statistics library with an applicable license which may contain these algorithms?

I came across the extensive and highly interesting Cognitive Foundry library from Sandia Corporation, but although it is BSD licensed, there are some license terms which make us wonder whether we have to back off using it:

"Copyright (c) 2009 Sandia Corporation. Under the terms of Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000 with Sandia Corporation, the U.S. Government retains certain rights in this software"
https://github.com/algorithmfoundry/Foundry/blob/master/License.txt

and

under "Copyright history"
https://github.com/algorithmfoundry/Foundry/blob/master/CopyrightHistory.txt
"Under the terms of Contract DE-AC04-94AL85000, there is a non-exclusive license for use of this work by or on behalf of the U.S. Government. Export of this data may require a license from the United States Government."

and

"Any licensee of this software has the obligation and responsibility to abide by the applicable export control laws, regulations, and general prohibitions relating to the export of technical data. Failure to obtain an export control license or other authority from the Government may result in criminal liability under U.S. laws."



Best regards,
Andreas

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
OpenChrom - the open source alternative for chromatography / mass spectrometry
Dr. Andreas Klingberg
Founder
andreas.klingberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxhttp://www.openchrom.net
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Jay Jay Billings

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Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Twitter Handle: @jayjaybillings

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