[OSGeo-Discuss] Lidar News magazine false statements on (L)GPL (Was [OSGeo-Standards] REPORT: my OGC membership slot)

[Carl Reed]

Slight historical note: Way back when (1996) the Open Software Foundation
merged with X/Open and became the Open Group: http://www.opengroup.org/ .
Only 20 years of date.

Cheers

Carl


On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 3:38 AM, Johan Van de Wauw <
johan.vandewauw at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Martin Isenburg
> <martin.isenburg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Another curious thing is that I (and the open source license LGPL) was
> > attacked vehemently in a recent column called "Open Source Mania" by
> Lewis
> > Graham that was published in the LiDAR News magazine. Viewer discretion
> > advised and parental guidance suggested ... you will not like this FUD
> > attack:
> >
> >
> http://www.lidarmag.com/PDF/LiDARNewsMagazine_Graham-OpenSourceMania_Vol5No4.pdf
> >
>
> I read the article and there are a lot of statements there which are false.
> " if you touch a piece of GPL code with the nine foot pole of
> launching it with a Python script, that script must now be GPLed"
> not true
>
> "Suppose you have developed some very, very clever algorithm on which
> you and your university have applied for a patent. If you have coded
> your algorithm and used any GPL whatsoever, you just GPLed your
> patent. The patent rights effectively transfer to the Open Software
> Foundation for free distribution."
>
> Completely untrue. The Open Software Foundation does not exist. You
> don't transfer patent rights at all. A well known counter-example is
> the algortihm for MP3, where the code (lame) was released under LGPL.
>
> I think as OSGeo we should reply to the statements, this is an attack
> on our community. Perhaps we can ask someone from the Free Software
> Foundation Europe to help write a response?
>
> Kind Regards,
> Johan
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>



-- 
Carl Reed, PhD
Carl Reed and Associates

Mobile: 970-402-0284
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