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Computer Program Services

Rules for requesters - Restrictions on the use of programs and data

Authors and their establishments must be consulted if an organisation receiving programs and data intends to use them to provide commercial service to outside users.

Programs and data are provided on the understanding that the agreement of the originating establishment shall be obtained before a service is offered involving sale or use on a fee-paying basis of any program or data set distributed by the NEA Data Bank. This restriction applies also to modified versions derived from program copies obtained from the NEA Data Bank.

Transfer of a program or data to a user in a given establishment confers only the right to use the program within that organisation: in particular, copies of programs and data should not be distributed to persons outside their own establishment; users in other centres should contact the NEA Data Bank directly in order to obtain program copies.

Computer programs and data are provided on the understanding that whenever the use of programs obtained through the NEA Data Bank, or locally modified versions of them, results in a publication (a journal, conference proceedings, laboratory report, book etc.), the program and its author or laboratory of origin shall be acknowledged in the publication.

To be more specific as to how these restrictions must be interpreted the following should be noted:

the codes users receive from the Data Bank cannot be further distributed, thereby prohibiting the sale of such material,

if users modify codes, they must inform the authors. Improved versions may not be sold without users coming to an agreement with the principal authors,

users are not permitted to set up the code on a shared computer which allows other users to access the code by paying a royalty for its use,

however, there is no objection to expert users within a contract or project with a third party, modelling a problem, interpreting results and recovering the cost of their work and expertise by using a code received from the Data Bank.

In order to hold training courses/classes and workshops with hands-on use of computer codes distributed by the NEA Data Bank, the Data Bank must be consulted and specific authorisation must be obtained if the authors or managers of the code concerned are not directly involved in the course/class/workshop.

DISCLAIMER

Neither the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development or any of its Member countries, nor any person acting either on behalf of any of them or otherwise in furtherance of the activities of the Nuclear Energy Agency assumes any liabilities with respect to the use of, or for damage resulting from the use of, any information, method or process disclosed in the distributed material. This applies also to non-Member countries and Organisations that have contributed to the distributed information.

FEEDBACK ON COMPUTER PROGRAMS AND DATA

Recipients of computer programs are invited to report back to the NEA Data Bank the following information concerning material received:

errors or shortcomings detected;
inconsistencies between the program or data and its documentation (differences in the model description and its coding in the program);
limitations found in its applicability not reported in the documentation;
improvements carried out (corrections of errors or removal of shortcomings);
generalisations of the program so that it can be applied to a wider range of problems;
auxiliary programs developed;
information on validations carried out.

This information will be used to inform the author(s) and users of the program as well as to update the program if required. This activity aims at updating and maintaining the quality of the computer code collection.

Last updated: 13 March 2006