Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 14:45:04 +0000
From: Vaspmaster 
Subject: Change in co-publication policy
Sender: vasp@proton.vasp.at
To: vasp.materialphysik@univie.ac.at

Dear VASP users, 

as you all know, the licence agreement on VASP contains a
co-publication clause. We feel that with the rapidly spreading use of
VASP, this clause is become unpracticable and obsolete.

We therefore officially renounce this paragraph in the licence
agreement.  The only exception is if , beyond the use of the VASP code,
you have received some  special help or support from our group. This
could for example be a special pseudopotential that Georg Kresse has
generated at your request or the support of one of our other co-workers
in setting up your calculations.  In such a case I would consider it as
appropriate that co-authorship is offered, but you should consult
directly with whomsoever has assisted you in your problem - before
submitting a manuscript.  In future, this paragraph will not appear in
an amended licence agreement.

Another point concerns proper reference to the use of VASP and of the
data-base for pseudopotentials. While references to VASP seems to be
largely correct, the reference to the database for ultrasoft
pseudopotentials is very often missing or incorrect. Please note that
the ultrasoft pseudopotentials supplied in our data-based are not
simply ''Vanderbilt-pseudopotentials'' - there is no doubt that our
work follows Vanderbilt's very closely, but the potentials differ in
many details. Hence it appears to be correct to refer to both
Vanderbilts and Kresse's papers.

We would also remind you that this paragraph in the licence agreement
lists an obligation on your side to send us reprints of work based on
the use of VASP.  We think that to collect the references and to make
them available could be a very valuable service to the VASP community:
we are very often asked wether VASP has already been used for such and
such a problem. Without your cooperation our knowledge will always
remain very incomplete. In future we will collect references to work
based on VASP on a file accessible to all VASP users. Therefore I allow
myself to remind you that sending such reprints is a contractual
obligation.

With best regards,


Juergen Hafner 

Institut fuer Materialphysik and 
Center for Computational Materials Science
Universitaet Wien
Sensengasse 8/12
A-1090 Wien, Austria

Tel.: +43-1-4277-51400
FAX : +43-1-4277-9514
Email: juergen.hafner@univie.ac.at