license - zoom to selected

[Stephen Lime]

The University will have to comment on why simply the MIT license wasn't
used. I believe it centered on what exactly "substantial portions" means. An
effort has been made to get OSI certification but those folks aren't real speedy.

The release of 3.3.011 will be accompanied by a refreshed website that will
contain links to the license on all pages.

Steve

Stephen Lime
Internet Applications Analyst

Minnesota DNR
500 Lafayette Road
St. Paul, MN 55155
651-297-2937

>>> Daniel Morissette <danmo at videotron.ca> 07/09/00 09:56AM >>>
Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> 
> Just in short: MapServer is VERY close to the MIT license, but is
> not identical. Thus you will not find it at www.gnu.org.
> I consider the difference as neglectable unless you are planning
> *big business* with the map server. However, Map Server
> is Free Software!.
> 

Jan-Oliver,

You have a good eye... when I first looked at the license I didn't
notice the subtle difference:

The X/MIT license says:
 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be 
 included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 
MapServer's license says:
 The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be 
 included in all copies of this Software or works derived from this
 Software.

My understanding is that UMN asks for their copyright notice to be
included with the source code for all derived work (makes sense!), but
unlike the GPL, that should not force you to make your derived work Open
Source or to include the copyright notice in end-user accessable
documentation (like GD asks you to do).  Which means that the impact is
minimal.  

Am I right?  Or is there something else that I missed?

>
> In that thread in May, there was the proposal to put the license
> online. It would really help to provide an answer to this FAQ.
> 

I still think that it would make sense to make the licensing easily
accessable on the web site and make it clear that this is a "Modified
X/MIT license"...  While I don't think that the UMN license is
restrictive at all, it would still be better if new users could easily
find the licensing terms before they decide to adopt MapServer.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
 Daniel Morissette                       danmo at videotron.ca 
              http://pages.infinit.net/danmo/ 
------------------------------------------------------------
  Don't put for tomorrow what you can do today, because if 
      you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.