[GRASS-ABM] [frankie@debian.org: Re: [GRASSLIST:10783] Re: [GRASS5] FWD: [OSGeo-Discuss] Incubation Committee / Contributor Agreements]]

[Roger Bivand]

On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Michael Barton wrote:

> I think that the issue is not whether GRASS can use a piece of software
> under a BSD/MIT license, but whether a piece of software licensed under
> BSD/MIT can use GRASS.
> 
> Does that make sense? If this kind of question can be clarified, it might
> help a lot.

Please have a look at the text near the head of:

https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/doc/COPYRIGHTS

"From the announcement of the change (2001-Feb-05) ..."

The key question is almost always distribution of derived software, not
use of the GPL software itself. In the R case, the API headers were moved
to LGPL to accommodate the distribution of derived software built against
R. The question of whether another work uses a GPL'ed work will also
depend on how it interfaces - through a C-API, loading DLLs/shared
objects, client-server, there's quite a range, and some of the uses are
quite hands-off.

There is a discussion of this in the QGIS codebase (QGIS is GPL) to 
accommodate Qt.

The R FAQ is also very clear on commercial use:

http://cran.r-project.org/doc/FAQ/R-FAQ.html#Can-I-use-R-for-commercial-purposes_003f

and insofar as GRASS is GPL, the same permissions for use apply. The 
restrictions begin to apply if someone takes GPL'ed code, modifies it, and 
distributes it in their own software under a changed license. So it isn't 
really about use, we're pleased that people find the software useful. It's 
about the distribution of derived works which abuse the copyright and 
license terms chosen by the author(s).

Compare this with the academic situation: we all like being cited, but 
being cited extensively without the appropriate references is not so much 
fun.

Roger

> 
> Michael
> ______________________________
> Michael Barton, Professor of Anthropology
> School of Human Evolution and Social Change
> Arizona State University
> Tempe, AZ  85287-2402
> USA
> 
> voice: 480-965-6262; fax: 480-965-7671
> www: http://www.public.asu.edu/~cmbarton
> 
> 
> > From: Markus Neteler <neteler at itc.it>
> > Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 12:46:14 +0100
> > To: <grass-abm at grass.itc.it>
> > Subject: [GRASS-ABM] [frankie at debian.org: Re: [GRASSLIST:10783] Re: [GRASS5]
> > FWD: [OSGeo-Discuss] Incubation Committee / Contributor Agreements]]
> > 
> > Attached a FWD from GRASS-dev.
> > 
> > Interestingly there is the opinion that GRASS *is*
> > compliant with new-BSD and MIT:
> > 
> > http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2006-March/021606.html
> > http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2006-March/021611.html
> > 
> > Now I wonder why we discussed this some weeks ago? Maybe
> > I am getting something wrong here.
> > 
> > Markus
> > 
> > -- 
> > Markus Neteler     <neteler itc it>       http://mpa.itc.it
> > ITC-irst -  Centro per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica
> > MPBA - Predictive Models for Biol. & Environ. Data Analysis
> > Via Sommarive, 18        -       38050 Povo (Trento), Italy
> 
> _______________________________________________
> grass5 mailing list
> grass5 at grass.itc.it
> http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grass5
> 

-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no