[Kstars-devel] Re: Fwd: Fwd: star catalog

[Akarsh Simha]

Hi Noel, Jason

@Jason: If you wouldn't mind, could you scroll down to the place where
	I say "I'm copying to Jason" and confirm the validity of my
	claims?

> So, please correct me, the legal state (to Tycho2) is:
> 
> Files: deepstars.dat
> Copyright: 2008 Akarsh Simha <kstars-devel at kde.org>, Jason Harris <kstars-
> devel at kde.org>
> License: GPL
> X-Original-Data-Copyright: 2000 E. H?g, C. Fabricius, V.V. Makarov, S. Urban, 
> T. Corbin, G. Wycoff, U. Bastian, P. Schwekendiek, and A. Wicenec
>                            1997 ESA
> X-Reference: Astron. Astrophys. 355.2, P L19-L22 (2000) :
>              The Tycho-2 Catalogue of the 2.5 Million Brightest Stars.
> 
> or must I delete X-Original-Data-Copyright and X-Reference and add something 
> like
> 
> X-Original-Data-License: Public Domain by USNO

Could you possibly keep both?  

Also, isn't it public domain by NASA (and not ESA/Høg?)

AFAIK, we used data from the NASA ADC, whose policies are here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070303235508/http://adc.astro.umd.edu/adc/questions_feedback.html#policies1
for Tycho-2 and that's what deepstars.dat was built out of.

The Tycho-2 catalog itself was available there, and since it was hosted by the ADC,
http://web.archive.org/web/20060908122029/adc.astro.umd.edu/cgi-bin/adc/cat.pl?/catalogs/1/1259/
the policy must be applicable to Tycho-2 as well.

So maybe we should say "(c) Erik Høg et al.", but then mention
"Public Domain according to <NASA ADC citation>"?

When USNO's data was obtained, Jason matched the Tycho-2 stars were
matched against the NASA ADC Tycho-2, and got rid of them from the
USNO, and sent me the rest of the USNO data for creating the binary
files. So for the USNO catalog (USNO-NOMAD-1e8.dat), the mail I just
forwarded applies.

> Moreover, the data you used to compile deepstars.dat does come from the 
> published Tycho2 catalogue (copyright Erik H?g et al) or directly from raw 
> USNO data?

I think it comes from the Tycho-2. As I said, Jason sent me Tycho-2
data first, before he got any data from USNO, and sieved out Tycho-2
stars from the NOMAD. I'm copying to Jason to see if he can correct
me.

> That is, should I cite H?g or ESA or just USNO? I must confess I'm a bit lost, 
> since the Tycho2 name suggests citing H?g and ESA.

I think we should cite Høg and ESA, but mention that it is public
domain by NASA ADC citation.

> > The NGC/IC data is partially from the SAC catalog, which I've again
> > used with permission. The license on the SAC catalog says "This is not
> > suitable for commercial use", but we are GPL-ed, so I wrote a mail
> > asking about this. The response was approximately that "This was
> > stated with the intention that it should not be sold separately. For
> > use with a program, it's fine.". Let me know if you need that. I think
> > you probably don't, because that's shipped with KStars by default
> > anyway!
> 
> That's work for another Debian maintainer ;) but as soon as this is settled 
> for Tycho2 I will contact him in order to be sure.

Oh! I don't think this is an issue. Don't bother. I specified this
detail in the data file itself (it's an ASCII file)

> > Thanks a ton! I'm sure this will be very useful to Debian + KStars
> > users (I'm one of them, although I use trunk! :D)
> > 
> > Regards
> > Akarsh
> 
> No no, thanks to you for your understanding abou how hard this can be

Well, it is important to keep these things absolutely clean. I'm very
sorry I haven't been concentrating on KStars in the past. Hopefully,
I'll be able to spend a lot of time on it in December!

Regards
Akarsh