Modifications

Wednesday, 26 October 2005

GROMACS is free software, distributed under the GNU General Public License. However, scientific software is a little special compared to most other programs. Both you, we, and all other GROMACS users depend on the quality of the code, and when we find bugs (every piece of software has them) it is crucial that we can correct it and say that it was fixed in version X of the file or package release. For the same reason, it is important that you can reproduce other people's result from a certain GROMACS version. The easiest way to avoid this kind of problems is to get your modifications included in the main distribution. We'll be happy to consider any decent code. If it's a separate program it can probably be included in the contrib directory straight away (not supported by us), but for major changes in the main code we appreciate if you first test that it works with MPI, double precision, fortran code, etc. If you still want to distribute a modified version or use part of GROMACS in your own program, remember that the entire modified must be licensed under GPL, and that it must clearly be labeled as derived work. It should not use the name "official GROMACS", and make sure support questions are directed to you instead of the GROMACS developers. Sorry for the hard wording, but it is meant to protect YOUR reseach results!

 

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