Releases and Distribution
Releases
ESO-MIDAS is available under the GNU General Public License. The short statement of the GNU license is included in every MIDAS file; the full text is included as a separate file in the ESO-MIDAS Release.ESO-MIDAS is released twice a year, an ESO-internal release in February and the official yearly Midas release in September, for ESO as well as the external user community. Manual pages,installation guides and other documentation are generally released together with the source code and can also be obtained from the ESO-MIDAS HTTPS account (see below). In some exceptional cases the release of the documentation can be delayed slightly.
New releases, new packages and patches as well as other relevant information for the MIDAS users community will be announced via the various communication channels to the User's community, described in the ESO-MIDAS Web page on User Support and Information Services . MIDAS sites are also recommended to check for the existence of new patches in the relevant README file on our HTTPS server on a regular basis.
Distribution
ESO-MIDAS is available under the GNU Public Lisence which means that everyon is free to use it and free to redistribute it on certain condition. Therefore, all source code of ESO-MIDAS, documentation, are made available via the ESO-MIDAS anonymous ftp account.The ESO-MIDAS HTTPS server contains, all source code, documentation, patch levels, and verification procedures. In addition the HTTPS account contains:
- Calibration data for all supported platform;
- Demonstration data for supported platforms;
- midas-announce mailing list;
- midas-users mailing list;
Production of the ESO-MIDAS CD-ROM has been discontinued since the 08SEP release of Midas.
Information concerning ESO-MIDAS user support is described in the ESO-MIDAS Web page on User Support and Information Services.
If the use of the ESO-MIDAS system for data reduction is acknowledged it is recommended to refer to the specific ESO-MIDAS version used in the acknowledgement.