[GRASS-PSC] grass code making its way into gdal (+relicense)

[Massimiliano Cannata]

Dylan Beaudette wrote:
> On Sun, May 3, 2009 at 10:24 PM, Hamish <hamish_b at yahoo.com> wrote:
>   
>> [http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/ticket/2975]
>>
>> Frank wrote:
>>     
>>> If the GPL/GRASS derived portions cannot be rewritten we will have to
>>> remove them or the whole utility.
>>>       
>> It is pretty clear that the core methods of gdaldem were directly derived
>> from a GPL work. As luck would have it (I'm guessing, but it's highly
>> likely) that the GPL work in question was itself derived from a public domain work, so there is a good chance that we have a fairly clean way out
>> of this. It is my hope that we will be able to find old CERL/GRASS public
>> domain versions to go back to which contain the bulk of the code so we can
>> confirm that and gdaldem doesn't have to be removed or relicensed as GPL.
>> But nobody has gone back to do that yet. An audit would have to be done
>> between that original CERL code, the modern GRASS code, and gdaldem to be
>> sure that no GPL additions are included. As gdaldem (seems) based on GPL
>> grass that means following each CVS/SVN log 1999-2006, which luckily we
>> still have. Confirming that some bits of it were in the public domain does
>> not confirm that other bits of it are not.
>>
>> If anything was found we'd have to sort that out, either by permission or
>> by rewrite. We'd have to supervise that to some extent, but the onus is
>> really on the new coder to prove that they have committed clean code.
>>
>>
>>     
>>> I appreciate your bringing this to our attention (indirectly).
>>>       
>> my intention had been to discuss it amongst ourselves here and more fully
>> do our homework on it so to present something robust to gdal from the
>> offset, rather to immediately yell "gpl violation!" and run in circles
>> waving arms about, which helps nobody. so the gdal bug is filed a little
>> sooner than I planned, but I guess that's not a bad thing either as I
>> would not like to see GDAL 1.7.0 published in the mean time without this
>> being known.
>>
>> I'd still like a discussion to take place among the GRASS devels as
>> I think it's healthy and reassuring to put forward a consensus view.
>>
>>
>> best,
>> Hamish
>>
>>     
>
> I am not an expert on the myriad of open source licenses, however, I
> have met and interacted with Matt Perry and I do not think that this
> act was intentional. I think that bringing Matt into the discussion as
> soon as possible would be a good idea, as his original release of this
> code appeared to be done as a case study in GDAL programming.
>
> That said, I am glad that Hamish has spent the time and effort to look
> over this code. The movement of GPL-ed GRASS algorithms into BSD-ed
> mini-applications could represent a net loss of GRAS dev. time and
> effort.
>
> Thanks to all that have been looking into this matter.
>
> Cheers,
> Dylan
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>
>   
I also don't think this was intentionally done and, as confirmed by 
Frank, GDAL peoples will look into this.
But, even if derived from public domain work, I would suggest to Perry 
to give the right credit to peoples that works on this:
its only a matter of fair play.

Btw: I cannot imagine how much of the GRASS code could have been ripped 
in other apps and licences...

Maxi



-- 

Dr. Eng. Massimiliano Cannata
Responsabile Area Geomatica
Istituto Scienze della Terra
Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana
Via Trevano, c.p. 72
CH-6952 Canobbio-Lugano
Tel: +41 (0)58 666 62 14
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