[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 11-02-01 11:04 AM, Ray Gardener wrote:
> Oh man. So over time, as more GPL'd drivers are written, the very purpose of
> GDAL gets watered down. It's not like people are going to develop MIT-licenced
> drivers if they see an existing GPL driver that does the job. At the very
> least, the motivation will be blunted.
>
> The whole reason I went with GDAL was that it was reasonable in regards to
> commercial devs. Now there's going to be a situation where they get
> increasingly treated as second-class citizens.
>
> It's unreasonable to disclose a large application just because drivers are
> GPL'd. It should be submission policy to GDAL that they're LGPL'd. Frank's gone
> to the trouble of creating an environment that is commercial agnostic, and now
> it's being undone.

Folks,

I would prefer that this RFC discussion not turn into a broad license
argument.  I accept the rights of software developers to offer their
product under proprietary, recriprocal or non-reciprocal licenses and we
as consumer need to take or leave the offered components on their own
terms.

GDAL is released under an MIT/X nonrecriprocal open source license
because I and others believe this allows us to serve and involve the
largest possible community.  When we have an option between a proprietary
driver or a nonreciprocal driver then we will choose the nonreciprocal
driver.  When we have a chose between a reciprocally licensed driver
and a non-reciprocally licensed driver we will choose the
nonreciprocally licensed driver.   But I do not accept a that GDAL
is made poorer by also having options for proprietary and reciprocal
drivers for purposes that we could not otherwise serve.

I don't see any evidence that GDAL is becoming more dependent on GPL
or proprietary drivers as time goes on.  Care has always been called
for by distributors of software based on GDAL.

Ray, Patrick and Howard have argued against taking on runtime responsibility
for license checking in GDAL.  I only very weakly grasp the argument so
it might be worth expanding on it.

But this RFC is not about whether there will be proprietary GDAL drivers,
or reciprocally licensed drivers.  There have been, are and will be.
The question is in what ways does it make sense for the project to help
support application developers and distributors in being license
compliant.

Best regards,
-- 
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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