[Qgis-developer] RE: Qgis-developer Digest, Vol 74, Issue 8

[Alister Hood]

> Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2011 22:42:22 +1000
> From: Nathan Woodrow <madmanwoo at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Qgis-developer] Re: [Qgis-user] Re: ecw problems
> To: giovanni.manghi at gmail.com
> Cc: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org, qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAAi8Yg-H5DMGEd_RRGUqoyx_0M9W3-n6aGLkVRU+qybxMR7FSA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
> 
> It seems we are allowed to ship the ecw read-only SDK on windows:
> 
> "For avoidance of doubt, this Agreement does not permit You to (a) use the
> ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK
> Desktop Read-Only to create or distribute Server Applications or SDKs; (b)
> use the ERDAS ECW/JP2
> SDK Desktop Read-Only to create Libraries; or (c) distribute header files
> or .lib Library files included in
> the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Desktop Read-Only. You _may_ distribute with your End
> Application any
> dynamically loadable object Libraries (.dll files) that are included in the
> "redistributables" directory of
> the ERDAS ECW/JP2 SDK Desktop Read-Only, and are used by your End
> Application.
> "
> I suggest that we do this. ecw is a pretty popular format and it doesn't
> look good on us to tell people to go to the ERDAS site to download
> something that may or may not work if ERDAS change the version under us.
> 
> - Nathan

Yes, I don't understand why people keep saying they can't be redistributed.

But look at that license more closely:

- you can distribute the libs with a "desktop" application, not a "server" 
application or a "library".  The way I understood this was that you generally 
couldn't distribute them with GDAL, but you might be able to argue that it 
is within the "spirit" of the license to distribute them with QGIS binary 
packages, because in that case you are providing gdal as part of  QGIS, a 
"desktop" program, rather than as a library for a developer.  (Maybe some 
people would even take the view that the GDAL utilities in a binary GDAL package 
are also "desktop" programs.)

- Isn't there another clause stating that your program must display a 
particular statement about the user of their copyright software, and you need 
to make sure your users agree to a license (i.e. make them click through a 
license screen like in the installers for most Windows software, and if they 
don't agree with it then it won't be installed)?

- And isn't there a clause stating that you must register the users (collect 
information about them)?  
This is the real hassle, and I think most of the other people bundling ecw 
support with free GIS packages are violating it.  I was wanting to provide a 
package of one of the ECW example programs (for editing ECW headers), but 
I really don't have the energy to organise this nonsense.

It might be easier to distribute with QGIS the old version that is used on Linux.


Alister
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