On Monday, July 23, 2007, 8:39:22 PM, Felipe wrote:
FS> Reading the SVG specs, I see that there is a big chunk of C code FS> in the feTurbulence filter effect spec. What is the copyright FS> status of this piece of code? Is it public domain?
No, its not public domain (in the strict sense of that word). It has a copyright and a license, so its not public domain.
FS> After all, it is inside the specs, would them sue us if we FS> copy&paste it?
No, W3C would not. The specification may be freely implemented without fee. And that chunk of pseudocode is there precisely to help interoperability. You are welcome to copy it, use it as is, or make a derived optimized version. We do ask that you stick something in the readme or license.txt or whatever saying where that code came from.
FS> If we can use it let me know the conditions so that I can try to FS> implement this filter more easily.
FS> the code is here: http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG11/filters.html#feTurbulence
The W3C software license is here http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Legal/2002/copyright-software-20021231 it seems pretty clear (to me) but if you have questions, please ask.
BTW this is linked (together with the copyright etc) from the front page of the SVG 1.1 specification.