wilson@ucf-cs.UCF.EDU (tom wilson) (10/16/90)
Some time ago I talked with Eric Haines concerning a collection of ray tracing abstracts I was putting together. The collection contained the abstracts of all the papers I have on ray tracing (about 200 right now). I volunteered to make this available, but my question is: is this legal? The abstracts are almost verbatim from the papers/tech. reports/theses, and are clearly referenced above each abstract. The only changes are errors I've found (typos, etc.). I am certainly not going to ask for money. I initially did this for myself, since it would make an easy guide to find papers on a certain aspect. I intended to arrange all of the abstracts by topic (e.g. subdivision schemes, parallelism, antialiasing, etc.). Again these are only abstracts and not summaries (with the exception of a small number of papers that don't have abstracts, but I've clearly indicated where the info. comes from: introduction, author's summary, or my summary). Eric was unsure about the legality but was confident that most authors would want information concerning their papers propagated to others. I don't know why a publisher would get too upset, since you'll still need to find the article to read it. It may save time and effort trying to find something you eventually don't want. Assuming I get an ok on this and others would like to use it, I need to do several things: (1) finish the papers I haven't entered yet (a lot, about 30) and then finishing organizing by topic. (2) put it in a format that everyone can use. Right now the format is Latex, but I don't think that will work out for everyone. (3) put it at an ftp site. I don't know if I will be able to maintain it, but I'll try. Also, I have lots of references of papers I don't have (they're all in Eric [and Paul Heckbert?]'s RT bib). If I can obtain any of those, I will update the collection when I can. Certainly others can contribute once the THING gets established somewhere. Let's hear you thoughts. Tom Thanks to Eric for his e-mail conversations and many unnamed people for sending me the numerous papers I've requested. Many of these requests are fueling this fire as I almost dropped this idea due to lack of desire.
a976@mindlink.UUCP (Ron Tarrant) (10/17/90)
Whether or not it's actually legal, I don't know. But someone once said (it may have been Mark Twain) "if you copy from one source, it's theft; if you copy from two it's research." If you do make this collection available and list a bibliography, would that be so much different from writing a term paper or thesis? And if it's not so different, what are the legal implications of passing around copies of a term paper or thesis? -Ron Tarrant a976@Mindlink.UUCP