Resolution for EPSG "Use of the data" Requirements

[Jody Garnett]

Thanks for taking this up for us Frank - you rock.

I will ask the approriate geotools module maintains (cough Martin and 
Myself) to make a note for our
own review.txt files ;-)

Cheers,
> Folks,
>
> One of the licensing issues for GDAL/OGR and software packages built
> on GDAL, PROJ.4 or libgeotiff was that we weren't distributing *complete*
> versions of the EPSG coordinate systems.  Apparently this also affected
> one of the GeoTools "from EPSG" coordinate systems factories but not 
> another.
>
> I contacted EPSG and they are planning to relax the requirement though a
> released version with the relaxed constraints may not be available for a
> while.  I'll document this in the GDAL provenance review, and hope that
> this "rectification is under way" situation will be sufficient since it
> makes it clear that OGP (the EPSG folks) won't be interested in any legal
> action.
>
> Best regards,
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Subject:
> Re: EPSG "Use of the data" Requirements
> From:
> "Roger Lott \(EPSG\)" <epsg.rl at btinternet.com>
> Date:
> Thu, 20 Jul 2006 21:17:26 +0100
> To:
> "Frank Warmerdam" <warmerdam at pobox.com>
>
> To:
> "Frank Warmerdam" <warmerdam at pobox.com>
> CC:
> <Bernard.FLACELIERE at total.com>, "Geodetic Subcommittee OGP" 
> <geodetic at ogp.org.uk>
>
>
> Frank,
>  
> The OGP Geodesy Working Group discussed your request at today's 
> meeting. We understand the problem and are sympathetic to your request 
> to review our requirements. We feel that we need to change the current 
> wording, but it will take us some weeks to finalise replacement. We 
> anticipate a revised version of the dataset (v6.11) being published in 
> the first half of August. It is most unlikely that we will have 
> completed our conditions of use rewording for this release, and it 
> will probably carry the existing wording.
>  
> Feel free to circulate this information to your open source project 
> colleagues to keep them aware.
>  
> Regards,
>  
> Roger Lott
>
>     *Frank Warmerdam <warmerdam at pobox.com <mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com>>*
>     Envoyé par : Frank Warmerdam <fwarmerdam at gmail.com
>     <mailto:fwarmerdam at gmail.com>>
>
>     10/07/2006 22:47
>
>     	
>     A
>     	bernard.flaceliere at total.com <mailto:bernard.flaceliere at total.com>
>     cc
>     	OSGeo-incubator <incubator at incubator.osgeo.org
>     <mailto:incubator at incubator.osgeo.org>>
>     Objet
>     	EPSG "Use of the data" Requirements
>
>
>
>     	
>
>
>
>
>
>     Bernard,
>
>     I am writing on behalf of several open source projects currently using
>     coordinate system lists derived from the EPSG database.  I have
>     copied the
>     following from the README .doc file distributed with a somewhat recent
>     version of the database:
>
>       1) All data pertinent to a specific coordinate reference system
>     must be
>     copied without modification and all related pages/records must be
>     included;
>       2) All components of this data set pertinent to any given
>     coordinate
>     reference system must be distributed together (complete
>     distribution of all
>     components of the data set is preferred, but the OGP  recognises
>     the need for
>     a more limited distribution);
>
>     My concern is that these projects mostly just distributed lists of
>     coordinate systems derived from the EPSG files, but expressed in
>     another
>     format such as OGC Well Known Text, or PROJ.4 initialization
>     strings.  The
>     problem with this is that such representations clearly violate
>     items (1) and
>     (2).  That is, they don't include all data about the coordinate
>     system, nor
>     do they include all related records.  For instance, fields like
>     "remarks"
>     cannot be represented in WKT.  And related records such as from
>     the area
>     of use table are generally not included.
>
>     So, I would like to petition the OGP Surveying and Positioning
>     committee
>     to relax items (1) and (2) to not being requirements, but rather
>     requests.
>
>     I would add that even the requirement that information be copied
>     without
>     modification is hard to adhere to, when some representations do
>     not support
>     the form the data is presented in the EPSG databse.  For instance, the
>     OGC WKT format only supports specifying ellipsoids as semi-major
>     length and
>     inverse flattening.  Thus, ellipsoids specified in the EPSG dataset as
>     semi-major and semi-minor will be distributed in a modified form,
>     in violation
>     of (1).
>
>     I realize that the OGP has little interest in bringing legal
>     action over
>     such minor technical violations of the use terms, but as part of the
>     formation of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation there is an ongoing
>     effort to bring our projects (GDAL and Geotool in this case) into
>     *strict*
>     compliance with the licensing terms of all components.  I hope
>     that you
>     will also see value in modifing your terms so that they can be adhered
>     to in a variety of usage scenarios.
>
>     I would add that similar issues apply to libgeotiff, PROJ.4 and a
>     variety
>     of other packages.  In addition to affecting a variety of open source
>     packages, these issues also affect a wide variety of proprietary
>     software
>     vendors who build on these packages.  For instance, the GeoTIFF using
>     community is "at risk".
>
>     Best regards,
>     -- 
>     ---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
>     I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,
>     warmerdam at pobox.com
>     light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
>     and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGF,
>     http://osgeo.org
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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