Form Letter for Japanese and East Asian users

Original writing: 24 November 1997
Latest revision : 6 July 2005

Dear ATP EMTP-interested person:

The form letter now being read is a specially-modified version of the North American form letter. It is used in Japan and East Asia to license and distribute ATP materials with the approval of:

Co-Chairmen of Canadian/American EMTP User Group
Dr. W. Scott Meyer    Dr. Tsu-huei Liu
3179 Oak Tree Court
West Linn, Oregon 97068
U.S.A.

The Alternative Transients Program (ATP) is the most widely used version of the Electromagnetic Transients program ( EMTP) in the world today --- by far! In no small part, the acceptance of ATP is due to its availability to nearly everyone in the world free of royalty, and its compatibility with the computers of most common interest.

EMTP was developed in the public domain at BPA (the Bonneville Power Administration) prior to the commercial initiative in 1984 by DCG (the EMTP Development Coordination Group, with which BPA has had no connection since expiration of the associated agreement on the last day of 1987) and EPRI (the Electric Power Research Institute of Palo Alto, California, USA). Whereas BPA work on EMTP remains in the public domain by U.S. law (FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act), ATP is not in the public domain. It is, however, available free of all charge to anyone in the world who has not participated voluntarily in the sale or attempted sale of any electromagnetic transients program (hereafter called "EMTP commerce").

Those who have engaged in EMTP commerce, but now wished they had not, may contact the Can/Am user group to learn about conditions of possible pardons.

Commercial competitors no longer are excluded from access to ATP. This is a big change from earlier years. As explained in the January, 1992, issue of the newsletter (story on pages 8-9), the Can/Am user group has decided to approve the disclosure of ATP to, and use by, any commercial developer of any competing electromagnetic transients program on the same terms as work of that commercial developer is made available to the general community of ATP users. This is reciprocity.

Membership in EPRI, CEA, or CRIEPI (the latter two being DCG members) does not, by itself, disqualify any organization from access to ATP, it is important to note. Nor does use of the DCG/EPRI EMTP that is licensed and distributed by EPRI. This is the significance of the adverb "voluntarily." Clearly, few if any EMTP users control the high-level politics that are associated with membership in national organizations such as EPRI, CEA, or CRIEPI, so membership alone will not be held against anyone. No problem exists provided no significant resources (e.g., money, technical advice, computer work, advertizing) have been contributed directly to the joint DCG/EPRI commercial project.

An Intel 80386-, 80486- or Pentium-based microcomputer that supports MS-DOS, DR-DOS or Windows 3.x/95 is by far the most common among 30 different possible platforms for the support of ATP. The user should have more than 2 Mbytes of RAM, at least 10 extra megabytes on his hard disk, some color-graphic monitor (yes, EGA is supported, although standard VGA is the most commonly used, and higher-resolution screens are supported), and a mouse that is Microsoft-compatible (i.e., the 2-button standard). This is all that it takes to support the Salford version -- so named because it uses the DOS extender (including virtual memory management) of the University of Salford in England.

Each authorized user of ATP must agree not to disclose any ATP information to unauthorized persons and / or organizations. A non-disclosure agreement to this effect must be signed by each potential user, and approved by the user group, before access to ATP information will be granted. The form is attached as sheet number 2 of this letter.

The sharing of ATP materials among authorized users is encouraged. If one authorized user has newer or better materials than a second, the first user is encouraged to share with the second.

Consultants and manufacturers who want to use ATP are encouraged to do so provided there is no misrepresentation, particularly to customers. In the case of commercial design and / or consulting, this means that clients or potential clients must be notified prominently, and at the earliest opportunity, about the EMTP version that is being used (ATP), its royalty-free nature, and who licenses its use. If the name DCG or EPRI is mentioned along with EMTP, it must be explained that ATP has no connection with the commercial product that is licensed by EPRI. Passing this form letter to a client is an easy way of informing him.

Education is another activity that can profit from ATP use, but only if several rules are carefully followed. First, there must be no misrepresentation of ATP (same requirement as the preceding paragraph) to potential students in any advertizing for the course. Second, prior to the disclosure of any ATP materials to any student, that student must be supplied with a copy of this form letter, he must submit licensing, and his application must be officially validated. Third, regarding access to ATP, all course faculty are subject to the same restrictions as students. If printed advertising for a course mentions ATP, it is strongly recommended that wording be checked with the user group prior to reproduction in order to avoid any possible misrepresentation.

Licensing to use ATP is free of all charge (it is just a piece of paper). Once one is licensed, he is authorized to obtain ATP materials from anyone (sharing among users is encouraged).

BPA is cooperating with the Can/Am user group for the noncommercial development and use of ATP, readers are reminded. As an agency of the U.S. government, BPA is accessible to the general public, and BPA performs some services that are valuable to the EMTP community. For example, BPA shares EMTP information with both foreign EMTP user groups and selected cooperating individual program developers and users. All inquiries about EMTP (nothing else, please!) can be addressed to:

Can/Am EMTP News is the name of the quarterly newsletter of the user group. The issues are dated January, April, July, and October, and all lengths since 1993 have been 20 pages. The newsletter is available free of charge to anyone, whether ATP licensed or not. Disk files began as WordPerfect 5.1 format, but later were switched to MS Word (.DOC files). Finally, only Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) files are released to the general public. These are readable using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader (click on yellow "Get Acrobat Reader" button of www.adobe.com/acrobat on the Web). Newsletters are available from several storage sites on the Internet such as the web site of the European EMTP-ATP Users Group (www.eeug.org) or on the campus of Kyoto University in Kyoto, operated by the Japanese ATP User Group (www.jaug.jp). Finally, the European user group EEUG operates a free electronic bulletin board using address atp-emtp-l@listserv.dfn.de. Prof. M. Kizilcay, University of Siegen, is responsible for the operation of that mailing list. This is for ATP-related announcements, questions, answers, etc. The EEUG publishes quarterly the EEUG News, which contains besides technical papers, reader's corner and hints for program usage.

The general information about ATP is also published on a Web page in Japan (http://www.jaug.jp).

Dynamic dimensioning allows actual table space of Salford EMTP to be fixed by the user at the start of execution. This began in mid-October of 1993. Previously, table sizes were fixed as the program was linked, resulting in names such as TP3 or TP20. These are history. Now, the single TPBIG.EXE satisfies all users.

Other computers (not Intel-based) are compatible with ATP. In fact, almost any modern computer of practical interest has been proven to be compatible (more than 30 distinct systems have been tested). ATP is supported on other computers in various places.

Yours sincerely

It is recommended to print this form letter for your own records before proceeding with the ATP licensing agreement.

If the preceding form letter has not yet been read carefully, do this before proceeding. Should any detail be unclear after reading, contact the user group for clarification prior to the submission of an application for free ATP licensing (next).

I agree with the terms and conditions of this form letter and would like to apply for the ATP license for Japanese and East Asian users: