Noel Giffin wrote:
I personally feel that all these variations on the formula type are very interesting in themselves, but probably not significant enough mathematically to argue about claiming ownership and creation rights, unless that particular formula becomes significant in it's own right, by lending insight into some significant scientific phenomena, or resolve some greater mathematical problem, or by use in a widely accepted application.
And this brings up something very akin to the old copyright issue (cussed and discussed year after year). ;-} I can understand a certain amount of pride in being the first individual to discover and use a particular formula. But as to actual 'ownership', this is too close to copyright. And do people actually create mathematical formulae, and have rights to such?? Or have these always existed and people just discover them?? The following is an older posting on this topic: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: [NEWBIE!] Help with formulas.. From: twegner@phoenix.phoenix.net (Tim Wegner)
Oh one last thing.. just to be on the safe side.. are any formulas copyrighted?
In what follows I use the plural pronoun because a number of Stone Soup folks have discussed this and are headed toward a consensus. This is not official policy (yet) but more like current thinking for discussion. Our preliminary opinion, which we will finalize in the next Fractint release, is that these formulas are not copyrighted. Mandelbrot certainly doesn't claim the copyright for z^2+c. We may keep the names of people who sent us formulas in the Fractint release file, or we may take them out (or delete files formulas if we can't get permission to delete the names). Just coming up with a formula is easy; any monkey with a typewriter can come up with one (I know because I've done this many times in presentations - I conjure up a formula out of the dark recesses of my imagination on the fly and generate a fractal from it). Seems ridiculous to claim a copyright on such a formula. Not to say that if a person does significant research concerning a particular formula that their name shouldn't be associated with the formula (eg Mandelbrot and z^2+c). Even though we started attributing authorship to formulas when Fractint first came out, now we wonder if this is a good idea unless a person has studied and written about a particular formula. Might be better to just make all formulas free of attribution, except for comments about significant theory or research connected with the formula that makes it interesting. Also I really don't want to get into the business of blessing people's priority with each release of Fractint -- I had one gentleman from a nameless European country call me repeatedly by long distance asking me to do just that. I finally convinced him to publish in some minor journal, so now he is happy! We never did include any of these formulas in a Fractint release. The most prolific contributors of formulas have not been that concerned about credit. PAR files (that include specific parameter values, coordinates, and colors specifying an image) are a different matter. We believe that a parameter file is a compact representation for a piece of (good or bad) art. There are truly striking images that have been created after days or even years of work that are representable in compact PAR form, and We believe it is ethically wrong and a violation of copyright law to take a PAR file for such an image and claim it as ones own. We respect and defend the copyrights of PAR authors. If we all encourage an ethic of honesty and respect here on the net, artists will be encouraged to share their PAR files. If artists experience that every PAR they upload gets published in a book or put on a CD with somebody else's name on it (attributed to "the brilliant creative genius xxxxx" as happened in one case -- I don't know how this guy lives with himself), then they'll stop sharing them. So far the online community has been very good, but there are some bad apples out there. I hope this was helpful to you. Discussion on any of this is welcome, especially the comments on copyrights. Tim ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sincerely, P.N.L. ------------------------------------------------- http://home.att.net/~Paul.N.Lee/PNL_Fractals.html http://www.Nahee.com/Fractals/