The MIDAS system is available, free of charge, to all non--profit research institutes, whereas other organisations or companies may be charged a nominal fee to cover distribution. Institutes interested in using MIDAS must sign a User Agreement before they receive MIDAS. The necessary forms can be obtained by contacting the Data Analysis Group at ESO/Munich. MIDAS is distributed in source code copyrighted by ESO with all rights reserved. Institutes receiving the MIDAS system are not allowed to redistribute it to other sites without explicit written permission from ESO. The use of the MIDAS system for data reduction should be properly acknowledged in papers and publications. It is recommended to refer to the specific MIDAS version used, e.g. 94NOV, in the acknowledgement.
The availability of new releases is announced through electronic mail.
Requests can be submitted either on special MIDAS Request Forms or
through e-mail quoting the user agreement number. Currently, MIDAS
has one yearly release in November ( e.g. the release in 1994 is
will be named 94NOV). The current system at ESO/Munich is frozen
several months prior to the official release. The official release is
based on this version, which is extensively tested both at ESO and at
a number of 
-test sites. Problems detected during these tests
are corrected in the official release version which is then given free
for distribution. For institutes with internet access, the release can
only be obtained from the MIDAS ftp account with a password (on an
exceptional basis it is also available on tape). Institutes without
internet access can request MIDAS on a range of tape media.
Binary copies of ESO-MIDAS (already installed and without sources) for specific systems are publicly available in the anonymous ftp account and do not need the signing of an ESO-MIDAS User Agreement. Official user support and documentation service from ESO for these binary copies are however not granted without a prior signed User Agreement.
Updates of the manual and other documentation take somewhat longer to prepare and print and can be obtained from the anonymous ftp account. On special request, copies and updates of documentation can be obtained by writing to the Data Analysis Group at ESO/Munich.