ACM PDE Code GNU Compliant?

[John Weatherwax]

Hello,
   I am VERY new to octave but have some experience with mathematical 
software, especially partial differential equations (PDE's).  I have 
noticed the lack of PDE software in octave and was thinking of helping 
to fix this.  I was thinking of trying to write a C++ wrapper (much in 
the spirit of what is done with lsode) to the following reference:

**
Algorithm 540: PDECOL, General Collocation Software for Partial 
Differential Equations [D3] 
<http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=355849&coll=portal&dl=ACM&CFID=45079042&CFTOKEN=21829523> 

N. K. Madsen, R. F. Sincovec
September 1979          
*ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software (TOMS)*,  Volume 5 Issue 3


   My questions then are (before I do too much work on this):

   1)  Would this be helpful?
   2) Could I use the ACM FORTRAN code (pdecol.f) in octave, i.e. is it 
GNU compliant?  I am attaching a link to the ACM software copyright and 
license information...I'm not very good at reading these things. 

   http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/softwareCRnotice.html

   I think the BLAS algorithms originally appeared in ACM TOMS so I am 
hoping that this will be alright.

   Thanks,

   John

--

John L. Weatherwax

Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
244 Wood Street
Lexington, MA 02420-9108 USA

Phone : 781-981-5370
Fax   : 781-981-4739
Email : address@hidden

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