[postgis] Re: [PATCHES] contrib/postgis spatial extensions

[Sondheim, Mark ELP:EX]

I'll be talking with Martin Davis (when he's back from holiday) about the
JTS license. If JTS were released under LGPL does that mesh well with
Frank's intentions? If anyone has any thoughts on the JTS license that have
not already been spelled out in the ongoing postgis discussion, please raise
them.

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Warmerdam [mailto:warmerdam at pobox.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2001 12:07 PM
To: postgis at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [postgis] Re: [PATCHES] contrib/postgis spatial extensions


Paul Ramsey wrote:
> 
> This is something which has been discussed on our list in the past. The
> main argument for BSD to date has been as you noted: to get eventual
> mainline pgsql inclusion. The main argument against, in my view, is that
> we want to be a place where open geomatics code can aggregate. At the
> moment, most geospatial algorithms are only available under commercial
> licencing regimes: until we get a critical mass of open projects and
> workable code, inertia will continue to point us towards closed source
> and development.
> 
> We'll talk about this a bit on the list and see what the PostGIS users
> think.

Folks, 

For what it's worth, I would prefer to see PostGIS under a BSD license. 
While BSD/MIT style licensing runs the risk of someone creating a
proprietary 
version of PostGIS (in the same way this could occur with PostgreSQL) I
think 
it is good for the sake of incorporation into PostgreSQL.  

Is the JTS code going to be GPLed?  If so, would hand conversion of it for
incorporation into PostGIS constitute a derived work in the sense that the
GPL would still have to apply to it?  

Part of my reason for having PostGIS and other GIS/RS technologies under the
more liberal BSD license is so that I can incorporate parts of them into my
own BSD licensed libraries.  It is arguable illegal for me to incorporate 
GPL licensed code into my BSD licensed libraries.  On the other hand BSD 
licensed code can always be incorporated into anything. 

With GPL we see all sorts of weird "license compatibility" issues.  For 
instance, it was illegal to incorporate GPLed code into some versions of 
Python because of subtle concerns about some license clauses.  

However, given that Refractions is by far the primary contributor I think
they
should decide on the license.  

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    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent


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