FLUKA Single-User License Agreement FAQ and Preamble -------------------------------------------------------- UPDATED===13.03.2011.15.58.58 TITLE===User license Preable and FAQ TYPE===subpage -------------------------------------------------------- FLUKA Single-User License Agreement FAQ

FLUKA Single-User License

Interpretations, Explanations & Examples

License Preamble:

Whereas the Authors and the Collaborators wish to make available to the non-profit scientific public access to FLUKA for legitimate scientific, medical and engineering uses; and

Whereas these same Authors and Collaborators are concerned that because their efforts have produced a code that is an integrated whole that is not intended to be dissected or subdivided and used in part in any manner; and finally

Whereas they wish to insure that any formal code comparisons that are made available to the public be a fair and accurate representation of the capabilities of FLUKA;

(The rights are granted with the limitations enumerated in the License Agreement)

What is Allowed Under the Single-User License:

When the FLUKA code is employed to simulate an experiment or physical setup, either real or hypothetical, for the PRIMARY PURPOSE of understanding the nature of the radiation field as it applies to that situation FOR the evaluation of the object or experiment in question, that is a manifestly allowed use of the code for its intended purpose.  Note that there are no restrictions in comparing the projections of FLUKA against the projections of similar codes employed for the primary purpose of assisting in the evaluation of that experiment or situation, and no restrictions under the License Agreement regardng publication of the results obtained with the FLUKA code.

EXAMPLES:


What is NOT Allowed Under the Single-User License:

When the FLUKA code is employed to simulate a reference experiment (one which has been fully analyzed, and whose results represent in some sense an accepted standard) or a physical setup, either real or hypothetical, for the PRIMARY PURPOSE of evaluating the performances of FLUKA, and/or comparing the predictions of various codes such as FLUKA with respect to one and other, this is termed "Benchmarking" in the License Agreement, and it is a manifestly disallowed use of the code without prior written permission from the authors.  The reason the authors wish to be consulted is to insure that in any such comparisons that FLUKA is used properly and its capabilities and limitations are clearly and correctly represented.   Another reason is that the authors willingly make available new developments and improvement as soon as they are tested and certified, before they are fully documented and published in scientific magazines  Under most but not necessarily all circumstances, such comparisons will typically be sponsored or organized by recognized international bodies or organizations, including for presentation in special sessions at international meetings.  The authors welcome the opportunity and time permitting will attempt to respond to all such genuine requests for participation.

FLUKA is an integrated code, meaning that it is intended by the authors that it be executed as a single composite code through the user interface supplied with the code.  Where it is appropriate for the user to supply special routines to tailor the output to the specific needs of a particular application, FLUKA provides a mechanism to accomplish that.  However, the FLUKA authors warn that the interrelationships intertwined in the various aspects of the code make attempting to extract individual models or the output from them for separate use external to the FLUKA code a wholly unreliable practice.  Therefore, in order to protect the user from making possible errors during such endeavors and to fairly protect the reputation of the FLUKA code's actual capabilities the Single-User License Agreement manifestly disallows any such activity, including the publication of any such results.  This is not limited to simply attempting to extract portions of the source code, but also includes attempting to run the code with specially designed input configurations to produce what amounts to look-up tables of output from the various models.  This includes attempts to extract tables of fundamental cross sections and other similar physical values.

EXAMPLES: