DISCLAIMERS, USER AGREEMENT AND COPYRIGHTS

    * The reason for this formality is that I have (as all of us do) legal
      bindings to my institutions (for me it's the University of Arizona the
      Space Telescope Science Institute, and the Herzberg Institute of
      Astrophysics) more than anything else.

      These guidelines are also meant to give freedom to anyone who needs to
      modify GALFIT in some fashion for his/her own work.  Because of such
      leeway, I have to take steps to disclaim myself from issues that may
      crop up when others boldly modify and then possibly redistribute a
      "hacked" version, intentionally or not, outside of my awareness.  Code
      redistribution is welcomed under some guidelines defined below.

      So here goes....

    * This code -- with the exception of the Numerical Recipes (R) subroutines
      (Press et el. 1997), the FFT subroutines (fftsg2d.c and fftsg.c)
      which are written by Takuya Ooura, and CFITSIO (Pence 1999) -- 
      is copyrighted by Chien Yi Peng.  Users are free to modify, 
      distribute, use the code, and publish results from it without my 
      consent or knowledge, by adhering to the following guidelines.  

    * There may be other software by the same name (in the past or the
      future). The agreements below obviously apply only to the software
      specifically published in Peng, Ho, Impey, & Rix (2002, AJ, 124: 266;
      2007 in preparation), and described above, which is provided to the
      public at large free of charge, and without further obligation.

    * Users of this code use it at own risk and should understand this is work
      in progress. There will likely be future updates, and I very much
      welcome suggestions on how to improve GALFIT and fix bugs.

    * Users are encouraged, but not required, to e-mail me at nrc-cnrc.gc.ca
      (user cyp) to be put on the user list. The e-mail addresses I receive
      will solely be used to contact users when there are important updates.
      I will not redistribute e-mail addresses in any way to anyone else or
      use them for any other purpose besides sending out notices of updates.

    * User who remotely thinks there's a bug in GALFIT is urged to contact me,
      at STScI (+1-250-363-0024, or by email to cyp).  It would greatly
      appreciated.

    * Users are encouraged to check back regularly to download the newest
      version of this code.  I try to add new features that I find useful in
      my own line of work, or other things that I get repeated requests from
      other users.  I'll try not to add bugs.

    * The source code is available to users because I don't mind users freely
      modifying GALFIT for personal use and for purposes I have not thought
      about.  However, code modifiers may not change the program name (except
      the version number to distinguish it as a modified version), and must
      document *the changes* explicitly in all forms of publications using
      this software.

    * Users who copy lines from this code into another code may not then turn
      around and sell that product.  That is because part of this code was not
      written by me (i.e.  comes from Numerical Recipes, FFT, CFITSIO), and
      GALFIT is made possible only by their generosity to make their codes
      available.

    * Users who modify GALFIT to add useful features are encouraged to contact
      me to incorporate his/her changes into future versions for public
      distribution, as a favor both to oneself (since it will be carried over
      into important future updates) or to others who may find them useful.
      Proper credit will be permanently noted in various places in the
      documentation, and the person who contributes to the change will be
      gratefully acknowledged.

    * I understand sometimes people may act as a re-distributor of a modified
      version of GALFIT to other co-workers without my knowledge.  This is
      perfectly fine under most conditions.  However, for maintaining some
      kind of version control and code uniformity, once a user modifies GALFIT
      for personal use, he/she may not redistribute the changes for **general
      access** (for free or for cost), in any way, shape, or form, or under a
      different software title, without prior explicit written consent.  By
      "general access" I mean that it may not be posted to the web or a public
      archive where it can be accessed by just about anyone, except as a
      temporary way to transfer the code to co-workers.

    * When issuing a personally modified GALFIT code to coworkers there must
      be clear and thorough documentations in the code, in the UPDATES file,
      and in other obvious places (e.g. journal publications) to indicate that
      it is a modification of GALFIT, furthermore *how* it has been modified.


Chien Peng  3/26/2005