McIDAS, ldm-mcidas, GOES Ingest and NOAAPort Status Report
Winter 2008/2009

Tom Yoksas
March 22, 2009

Overview

The use of McIDAS in the U.S. educational community remains largely unchanged since the last User Committee meeting in October, 2008.


Unidata McIDAS-X, -XCD (Yoksas)


Unidata McIDAS-X/-XCD Distribution License (Yoksas)

Concerns about distribution of Unidata McIDAS-X to institutions outside of the United States (e.g., CPTEC/INPE in Brazil and CONAE in Argentina) resulted in a letter a letter of clarification for distribution of Unidata McIDAS-X to better identify who may be allowed to legally download Unidata's distribution of McIDAS-X. The letter reaffirms Unidata's right to distribute McIDAS-X to the "international university community" while providing guidelines for which institutions may be regarded to be members of that community.

Prospective non-.edu users now have to read and agree to the following:

    "SSEC considers permissible users of the international university community to be those who are using McIDAS-X for academic classroom instruction or academic research by students related to obtaining a degree. Research institutes and government agencies that use McIDAS-X for meteorological research or operations must purchase a license from SSEC for the non-academic use. Given this clarification, and if Unidata users remain within the licensing terms that include no re-distribution of any portion of the software, SSEC is agreeable to providing this software to the international university Unidata user community.

    We need a clear statement from you that specifies all of the following:

    • you are accessing McIDAS from Unidata for use in a university
    • McIDAS must be used for academic classroom instruction or academic research by students related to obtaining a degree
    • your installation of McIDAS is not for use by a government agency, non-academic research institute, or private concern
    • you agree that you will not re-distribute any portion of the software

    As soon as you state that your use of Unidata McIDAS will conform to the items above, we will add your nangyalka@yahoo.com email address to the list that allows downloading of Unidata McIDAS."

Sites that can not meet these criteria (e.g., U.S. government agencies, private corporations, non-educational international users, etc.) are referred to the McIDAS Users Group (MUG) at UW/SSEC for assistance.


ldm-mcidas Decoders (Yoksas)


GOES Ingest Capabilities (Yoksas, Schmidt)


NOAAPort Ingest (Schmidt, Emmerson, Yoksas, Weber)


by Tom Yoksas.