[GRASS-dev] ecw, mrsid license (in)compatibility [was: text interface for GRASS70]

Hamish hamish_b at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 23 16:39:39 EDT 2011


Hamish:
> > ps- re. r45719 "winGRASS: include some gdal plugins", can you
> > confirm that these plugins are license compatible? (may have
> > been left out on purpose)
Martin: 
> currently it's gdal-ecw and gdal-mrsid.

AFAIU those are supplied as plugins and not built into the main
GDAL exactly because they are incompatible with the GPL and may
not be shipped with the likes of GRASS.

End users are free to add in them as they like, but then they
too lose the right to redistribute the combined work to others.

Similarly, people who want to redistribute a GPL-free GDAL can
leave out the GRASS plugin. (reimplemented from scratch as LGPL
one day..)

see http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc34_license_policy


> Anyway within winGRASS installer we are providing other osgeo4w
> packages, python, etc.

irrelevant- python (etc) are GPL compatible, and other things
supplied in parrallel by the main osgeo4w installer (AFAIK),
but not used by/with GRASS, fall under the OS exemption.


cheers,
Hamish



      


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