[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[strk]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2011 at 07:04:44AM -0600, Patrick Cannon wrote:
> This is exactly why many commercial applications do not or can not port to 
> Linux.

Again: you mean "closed-source" applications here, not "commercial", right ?

> The GPL is a virus license, if you really wanted the code to be "free" it 
> would be released under an MIT style license.  The GPL/LGPL is just another 
> proprietary license scheme that is meant to prevent people from using the 
> code in any commercial venture.  Which is OK if you are a government agency 
> or a school.

I don't get this.
What prevents you from talking with the copyright holder of a GPL/LGPL
licenced software the same way you'd talk with the copyright holder of
a proprietary licensed software ?

> There are many format suppliers that do not allow their IP to be exposed, 
> Maptech is a good example.  The BSB 3 format was reverse engineered but, no 
> one has gotten permission to "publish" the BSB 4 or 5 formats.

This is a very good reason for NOT using such formats.

I don't see how you can blame people giving you the grant to USE and
MODIFY and REDISTRIBUTE their code for not helping the spread of
such trap formats. You should be grateful.

> We supported this format on Linux and Mac and have signed license agreements 
> that prevent the release of the code.  Which means we can not 
> utilize "tainted" GPL/LGPL code in our applications.  Which is unfortunate 
> for the users, as they do not have the "choice" of turning on other 
> drivers.

They have the choice of not using your software, being tainted by
a restricting license preventing them from looking at the code.

They do have the choice of using free software (be it commercial or not).

--strk;

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