[pgrouting-dev] Licensing for Co-development
between OpenGraphRouter and pgRouting
Stephen Woodbridge
woodbri at swoodbridge.com
Thu Jun 2 23:05:12 EDT 2011
On 6/2/2011 10:39 PM, Daniel Kastl wrote:
> Hi Steve and Anton,
>
> First of all, there are already a couple of contributors to pgRouting
> and personally I don't want to invest time to get agreements from
> everyone in case we want to change a license. To setup a PSC was already
> some waste of time, that could have been spent better. ;-)
Well the PSC is an important step, but it does not solve our basic
problem of not having enough critical mass or having developers. GSoC is
helping this year and we hold that Jay and Kishore will have time and
interest to continue working with us in the future. Ashraf finished
school and some other projects and he has come back and it interested in
working more so there is hope.
> Also it makes sense in my opinion to just have the same license for
> pgRouting as PostGIS has.
There was some talk about merging with PostGIS. Is anything happening on
that front or is that dead?
> So from the pgRouting side I'm not really supporting any license change.
Ok, that is fine. We will have to work around that as a constraint.
-Steve
>
> Daniel
>
>
> 2011/6/3 Anton Patrushev <anton.patrushev at georepublic.de
> <mailto:anton.patrushev at georepublic.de>>
>
> Well, that's exactly what I was asking about - having dual MIT/GPL
> license for pgRouting why one would prefer GPL when MIT option is
> available? I mean, isn't it worth to think about moving to MIT-X
> instead?
>
> Anton.
>
> On 6/3/11, Stephen Woodbridge <woodbri at swoodbridge.com
> <mailto:woodbri at swoodbridge.com>> wrote:
> > Ok, so if I understand the licensing issues correctly:
> >
> > 1. any code developed in opengraphrouter under MIT-X is good
> provided we
> > do not introduce any GPL code into that code base.
> >
> > 2. we can use the opengraphrouter code in pgRouting because MIT-X is
> > compatible for inclusion with GPL code and this does not pollute
> > opengraphrouter code.
> >
> > Does this sound correct?
> >
> > This is important because Ashraf has more time to work on
> > opengraphrouter and one of my goals for him is to look into
> getting our
> > code callable from pgRouting. I want him to be more familiar with the
> > issues involved in doing that and we are interested in developing an
> > MIT-X licensed version of the contraction highways code in
> opengraphrouter.
> >
> > Why use MIT-X vs GPL vs a dual license?
> >
> > I do not want to start a License war thread, so I will state up front
> > that all these licenses have a place and a philosophy that they
> support
> > and everyone is entitled to their opinions. That said, I think
> that long
> > term if we can get these working together there can be some
> significant
> > benefits in potentially getting funding for development and
> porting the
> > code to other environments and databases. If you looks at
> mapserver as
> > an example they are very successful at getting funded projects -
> there
> > are a lot of reasons for this and not all are obvious, but it is my
> > strong belief that have an MIT-X license lowers the barriers to
> getting
> > commercial companies to consider funding development. None of my
> > consulting clients want any GPL v3 code in their infrastructure
> and they
> > are extremely cautious about including GPL based components and
> it is a
> > really hard sell to get them to consider funding GPL development.
> >
> > Based on 1. and 2. above if these are true, then a dual license is
> > probably not required. It would be nice if pgRouting had a dual
> license
> > because then code could move from pgRouting back to opengraphrouter
> > which would facilitate development. Under the current licensing
> code can
> > flow from opengraphrouter to pgrouting but not the other way.
> This means
> > we have to recreate all the tools there that we might want rather
> than
> > create new tools. If we are successful in building an a good library
> > that can be the future under pinning of pgrouting and other
> systems it
> > seems to be a waste of effort to not reuse what you have there. A
> good
> > example of code we might like to reuse are all the boost_*.cpp
> function.
> >
> > Regarding CGAL, I would be all for dropping that. I have
> developed code
> > that I'm considering adding to opengraphrouter that does the
> > triangularization and contour creation. If I do that then that
> could be
> > a potential replacement for CGAL, I also have a fast TSP routine
> that I
> > might also contribute opengraphrouter.
> >
> > -Steve
> >
> > On 6/2/2011 9:36 PM, Anton Patrushev wrote:
> >> Hi Daniel,
> >>
> >> Doesn't this statement
> >> * This program is free software; you can redistribute it
> and/or modify
> >> * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
> published by
> >> * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
> License, or
> >> * (at your option) any later version.
> >> assume later (i.e. v3) versions?
> >>
> >> I support getting rid of CGAL, but I don't think that PostGIS hulls
> >> fit all possible cases of Driving Distance use.
> >>
> >> Anton.
> >>
> >> On 6/3/11, Daniel Kastl<daniel at georepublic.de
> <mailto:daniel at georepublic.de>> wrote:
> >>> 2011/6/3 Anton Patrushev<anton.patrushev at georepublic.de
> <mailto:anton.patrushev at georepublic.de>>
> >>>
> >>>> Hi Steve,
> >>>>
> >>>> I believe pgRouting is under GPLv3 - I think we changed from
> v2 last
> >>>> year. For me GPL/MIT dual licensing looks a bit strange, I mean I
> >>>> can't imagine a case when one would prefer GPL.
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> No, it hasn't changed.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> MIT is GPL compatible and I see no problem with PostGIS which
> is also
> >>>> under
> >>>> GPL.
> >>>>
> >>>> By the way, we already have GPL/QPL compatibility issue :)
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> I would like to remove CGAL dependency and just return points
> for driving
> >>> distance.
> >>> With PostGIS 2.0 there is also support for concave hull. Then
> CGAL isn't
> >>> necessary anymore to calculate the drive time polygon.
> >>>
> >>> Daniel
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Anton.
> >>>>
> >>>> On 5/27/11, Stephen Woodbridge<woodbri at swoodbridge.com
> <mailto:woodbri at swoodbridge.com>> wrote:
> >>>>> Hi PSC,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I have been talking with Roni about doing more development for
> >>>>> OpenGraphRouter and to possible integrate that with
> pgRouting. The
> >>>>> first
> >>>>> issue I see is that of licensing. OpenGraphRouter is using an
> MIT-X
> >>>>> style license (and wants to stay that way) and I believe
> pgRouting is
> >>>>> using a GPLv2 License.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So I think this means we can move OpenGraphRouter code into
> pgRouting,
> >>>>> which would make that code dual licensed, ie code used in
> pgRouting
> >>>>> would become GPLv2, but the original in OpenGraphRouter would
> remain
> >>>>> MIT-X, but we could not move pgRouting code into OpenGraphRouter.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> One of my goals as we move forward is that code we develop
> should be
> >>>>> have a reference implementation in a command line tool in
> >>>>> OpenGraphRouter and a reference implementation with in pgRouting.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thoughts on the licensing
> >>>>> issues?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Would there be any interest in supporting a similar dual
> licensing in
> >>>>> pgRouting? This might not be possible because Postgresql/PostGIS
> >>>> licensing.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Frank, Paul, can you comment please.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thanks,
> >>>>> -Steve
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> pgrouting-dev mailing list
> >>>>> pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> <mailto:pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org>
> >>>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/pgrouting-dev
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Georepublic UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
> >>>> Salzmannstraße 44,
> >>>> 81739 München, Germany
> >>>>
> >>>> Anton Patrushev
> >>>> CTO
> >>>>
> >>>> eMail: anton.patrushev at georepublic.de
> <mailto:anton.patrushev at georepublic.de>
> >>>> Web: http://georepublic.de
> >>>>
> >>>> Tel: +49 (089) 420 959 519
> >>>> Sip: 1959519 at sipgate.de <mailto:1959519 at sipgate.de>
> >>>>
> >>>> Commercial register: Amtsgericht München, HRB 181428
> >>>> CEO: Daniel Kastl
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> pgrouting-dev mailing list
> >>>> pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org
> <mailto:pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org>
> >>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/pgrouting-dev
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Georepublic UG& Georepublic Japan
> >>> eMail: daniel.kastl at georepublic.de
> <mailto:daniel.kastl at georepublic.de>
> >>> Web: http://georepublic.de
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > pgrouting-dev mailing list
> > pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org <mailto:pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org>
> > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/pgrouting-dev
> >
>
>
> --
> Georepublic UG (haftungsbeschränkt)
> Salzmannstraße 44,
> 81739 München, Germany
>
> Anton Patrushev
> CTO
>
> eMail: anton.patrushev at georepublic.de
> <mailto:anton.patrushev at georepublic.de>
> Web: http://georepublic.de
>
> Tel: +49 (089) 420 959 519
> Sip: 1959519 at sipgate.de <mailto:1959519 at sipgate.de>
>
> Commercial register: Amtsgericht München, HRB 181428
> CEO: Daniel Kastl
> _______________________________________________
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Georepublic UG & Georepublic Japan
> eMail: daniel.kastl at georepublic.de <mailto:daniel.kastl at georepublic.de>
> Web: http://georepublic.de <http://georepublic.de/>
>
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