[Debichem-devel] Copyright license from MMFF94 Parameter Files

[Michael Banck]

Hi,

(pruning the non-Debian addresses)

On Sun, Dec 04, 2016 at 07:33:00PM +0000, Ximin Luo wrote:
> As part of the standard Debian copyright auditing processes, I've noticed that
> Jmol includes copies of the MMFF94 Parameter Files as well as the Validation
> Suite. The original copies are from here:
> 
> 1. ftp://ftp.wiley.com/public/journals/jcc/suppmat/17/490/MMFF-I_AppendixB.ascii
> 2. http://server.ccl.net/cca/data/MMFF94/
> 
> and they mention you two as the authors. (1) has a clear copyright notice
> "Copyright (c) Merck and Co., Inc., 1994, 1995, 1996", and (2) has no notice.

My personal opinion is that those files (at least the first) are
(scientific) data, and is as-such not copyrightable.  That's probably
not the majority opinion on debian-legal, though.

I could imagine a scenario where one person reads out the data from the
supplementary material of that JCC article, and another one types those
into some new file, thus resulting in a new layout (assuming the layout
and variable names are actually copyrighted, which I don't know), but I
think that'd be too much hassle.

Note also that several other packages (openbabel and rdkit at least,
maybe avogradro) ship those forcefield-parameters as well.

So I'd not bother, but if you manage to get a clear upstream decision,
that'd be great of course.


Michael