Dear Gap Forum members,
In a Forum letter of June 30, 1995 I first told you of the plan to
transfer development and maintenance of GAP to a team at the
University of St Andrews, Scotland, because of my upcoming retirement,
which is due at the end of this month. Since the time of the
conception of this plan there has been full consent with the
colleagues at St Andrews that GAP should remain an open and freely
available system and that as much support as possible in the
environment of small mathematical institutes should further be given
to the community of GAP users. We have documented this consent in a
formal agreement that has been signed in August 1996 by Michael
Atkinson in his position as head of the School of Mathematical and
Computational Sciences of the University of St Andrews and by me as
chairman of Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik, RWTH Aachen. In line with our
policy to keep you fully informed about all steps taken for GAP, I
append to this letter the full text of this agreement, which in an
appendix, signed today, states that we consider the handover as having
taken place now.
Since the first announcement of the plan to move GAP headquarters to
St Andrews, in several 'Interim reports' to this Forum I have kept you
informed of its progress. In fact quite a number of steps have been
taken jointly pursuing a smooth handover. An international GAP
Council has been formed to support the further development of GAP, the
colleagues at St Andrews have successfully secured financial support
for their task, Werner Nickel and Alexander Hulpke, who both worked in
the GAP team at Aachen are now working at St Andrews and there have
been frequent visits and many hundreds of e-mail contacts between the
two places during the last two years. Gradually St Andrews has already
taken over tasks, e.g. the release of GAP 3.4.4 and the administration
of GAP WWW pages and ftp server and the contact addresses gap,
gap-forum, and gap-trouble as well as the organisation of a GAP
workshop and numerous demonstrations of GAP at meetings.
Meanwhile, in fact since 1994, at Aachen the 'new GAP', GAP 4, had
been planned and implemented. The release of its first beta test
version GAP 4.B.1 three days ago marks the last step in the
development of GAP under my resonsibility. The colleagues in St
Andrews and I have agreed to fix today, July 21, 1997 as the date of
the official handover of GAP to St Andrews.
Since GAP was started in 1985/86 every member of the GAP team at
Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik, down to the youngest beginning diploma
student, had a large degree of independence and self-responsibility.
Individual contributions are thus documented in the code. It has been
tried to reach decisions on common problems by discussion of those
directly involved in a task. Nevertheless as chairman of Lehrstuhl D
and hence teamleader I did determine directions of work and I had a
last word on controversial issues, even if I did not use it so
often. Therefore I take responsibility for all deficiencies of our
work and in particular for shortcomings of our planning.
With the official handover today both that control of and that
responsibility for the further fate of GAP is transfered without any
reservation to the teamleaders at St Andrews.
During the eleven years of GAP at Lehrstuhl D I have enjoyed
cooperation of younger colleagues and students of outstanding loyalty
and dedication to a common task, that has also carried us through the
unavoidable downs and difficulties of a project of this size and
duration. I have always considered the development of the open and
freely available system GAP as a step towards the realisation of my
dream of Computational Group Theory in all its aspects from the
conception of an algorithm to its implementation and application
becoming a fully integrated and respected part of mathematics. I am
deeply grateful to all who have helped doing this step.
I wish the team at St Andrews successfull continuation of what we have
done and I wish all of you further fun and success working with GAP.
Aachen, July 21, 1997 Joachim Neubueser ----------------------------------------------------------------------
\documentclass{article}
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\begin{document}
\begingroup
\begin{center}
\Huge
Agreement between \\
\Large
\bigskip
Lehrstuhl D f\"ur Mathematik\\
RWTH Aachen, Germany\\
\large
\bigskip
henceforth refered to as 'Lehrstuhl D'\\
\bigskip
and \\
\Large
\bigskip
The School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences\\
University of St Andrews, Scotland\\
\bigskip
\large
henceforth refered to as 'St Andrews'.\\
\end{center}
\endgroup
\begin{enumerate}
\item
The Computer Algebra system {\sf GAP} (this acronym standing for
Groups, Algorithms, and Programming) has been developed since 1986
with the centre of development at Lehrstuhl D and maintenance and
service for the system being provided by Lehrstuhl D. In order to
protect the free availability of the system, Lehrstuhl D has issued a
copyright statement that is appended to this agreement as Appendix 1.
\item
In order to secure the further development of the system and to
further protect the free availability of it in the future beyond the
retirement of the present chairman of Lehrstuhl D, Prof. J.
Neub\"user, Lehrstuhl D and St Andrews have agreed to transfer the
coordination of the further development of the system as well as its
maintenance to St Andrews and accordingly simultaneously transfer the
copyright for {\sf GAP} to St Andrews.
\item
This transfer is to take place at some date between March 1, 1997 and
July 1, 1997 to be determined by agreement according to considerations
of practicability.
\item
Lehrstuhl D will make every possible effort to support a transfer of
the system in good order.
\item
While St Andrews will be entitled to change some details and
formulations of the copyright statement, St Andrews explicitely
guarantees that the sections a), b), c), d), and e) of the copyright
statement will not be changed in wording or meaning at any time.
\item
In addition St Andrews guarantees that it will continue to allow and
provide access free of any charge for everybody to the source code and
executables, as far as the latter exist, of kernel, library and data
in the whole of {\sf GAP} as well as to its manual in electronic form.
\item
The two parties agree that sections b) and c) together are to be
interpreted to allow the distribution of {\sf GAP} together with a
book or in the context of a CD collecting freely available software,
when such a book or CD are commercially distributed, as long as the
fact that {\sf GAP} is made available with such a book or on such a CD
does not constitute a reason for increasing the price of such a book
or CD beyond what is permitted by section c) and as long as such a
distribution is in no conflict with any statements of the copyright,
so in particular does not create any proprietary rights of authors or
publisher of such a book or distributor of such a CD.
\item
In the event that St Andrews at any time gives up the further
maintenance and development of {\sf GAP}, St Andrews promises that it
will make every effort to find a successor for this task who has in
turn to enter an agreement with St Andrews to guarantee that {\sf GAP}
is handed on under the same regulations and conditions that have been
agreed upon for this transfer of {\sf GAP} from Lehrstuhl D to St
Andrews.
\item
In the event that such successor cannot be found, while St Andrews is
unable to further maintain and develop {\sf GAP}, St Andrews will
continue to make every reasonable effort to protect the free
availability of {\sf GAP} as spelled out in sections a) to d) of the
copyright.
\item
The fact that the transfer has taken place according to this agreement
will be documented by an Appensix 2 to this document to be signed by
both parties at the time of the transfer.
\end{enumerate}
Agreed and signed,
\begin{verbatim}
Aachen, August, 1996 St Andrews, August, 1996
Joachim Neubueser M D Atkinson
Chairman, Head,
Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik The School of Mathematical
RWTH Aachen, Germany and Computational Sciences,
University of St Andrews
\end{verbatim}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\newpage\begingroup
\begin{center}
\large
Appendix 1.
\end{center}
\endgroup
{\sf GAP} is
\begin{verbatim}
Copyright (C) 1994 by Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik
RWTH, Templergraben 64, D 52056 Aachen, Germany
\end{verbatim}
\begin{enumerate}
\item[a)]
{\sf GAP} can be copied and distributed freely for any non-commercial
purpose.
\item[b)]
{\sf GAP} is *not* in the public domain, however. In particular you
are not allowed to incorporate {\sf GAP} or parts thereof into a
commercial product.
\item[c)]
If you copy {\sf GAP} for somebody else, you may ask this person for
refund of your expenses. This should cover cost of media, copying and
shipping. You are not allowed to ask for more than this. In any case
you must give a copy of this copyright notice along with the program.
\item[d)]
You are permitted to modify and redistribute {\sf GAP}, but you are
not allowed to restrict further redistribution. That is to say
proprietary modifications will not be allowed. We want all versions
of {\sf GAP} to remain free.
\item[e)]
If you modify any part of {\sf GAP} and redistribute it, you must
supply a {\tt README} document. This should specify what
modifications you made in which files. We do not want to take credit
or be blamed for your modifications.
\item[f)]
Of course we are interested in all of your modifications. In
particular we would like to see bug-fixes, improvements and new
functions. So again we would appreciate it if you would inform us
about all modifications you make.
\item[g)]
{\sf GAP} is distributed by us without any warranty, to the extent
permitted by applicable state law. We distribute {\sf GAP} *as is*
without warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including,
but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and
fitness for a particular purpose.
\item[h)]
The entire risk as to the quality and performance of the program is
with you. Should {\sf GAP} prove defective, you assume the cost of
all necessary servicing, repair or correction.
\item[j)]
In no case unless required by applicable law will we, and/or any other
party who may modify and redistribute {\sf GAP} as permitted above, be
liable to you for damages, including lost profits, lost monies or
other special, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use or inability to use {\sf GAP}.
\item[k)]
The system dependent part for IBM PCs with MS-DOS was written by
Steve Linton ({\tt sal@cs.st-and.ac.uk},
{\tt http://www-theory.cs.st-\\and.ac.uk/$\sim$sal}).
The system dependent part for IBM PCs with OS/2 was written by Harald
Boegeholz ({\tt hwb@mathematik.uni-stuttgart.de}).
The system dependent part for VAXen with VMS was written by Paul Doyle
({\tt csedoyle@bodkin.ucg.ie}).
The system dependent part for the Macintosh with Mac Programmers
Workshop (MPW) was written by Dave Bayer \\({\tt
dab@shire.math.columbia.edu}).
Many thanks to them for assigning the copyright to Lehrstuhl D f\"ur
Mathematik and/or allowing us to distribute their code.
\item[l)]
Some of the executables come with additional copyright notices.
Please check the files that come with the executables.
\end{enumerate}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\newpage\begingroup
\begin{center}
\large
Appendix 2.
\end{center}
\endgroup
This is to certify that the tranfer of the coordination of development
and the maintenance of {\sf GAP} as well as the copyright for
{\sf GAP} has taken place on July 21, 1997 in accordance with the
foregoing agreement.
\vspace{1.5cm}
Signed,
\begin{verbatim}
Aachen, July 21, 1997 St Andrews, July 21, 1997
Joachim Neubueser M D Atkinson
Chairman, Head,
Lehrstuhl D fuer Mathematik The School of Mathematical
RWTH Aachen, Germany and Computational Sciences,
University of St Andrews
\end{verbatim}
\end{document}