[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[Frank Warmerdam]

On 11-01-31 10:45 AM, Howard Butler wrote:
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/wiki/rfc34_license_policy
>
> I'm asymptotically approaching -1 on this RFC.  My concern is that it
> misplaces the apparent responsibility for managing licensing constraints on
> *us*.  It should always be the responsibility of users of the software to
> know, care, and mange the licensing of the software they're using.  What
> happens if we mislabel a driver?  Or not realize that a driver links to A,
> which links to B, which is GPL?  It's still the user's responsibility, but
> we've just done them a disservice.

Howard,

I do not believe we are taking on any legal or moral responsibility
if a driver is mislabelled.  I think a best effort on our part is
fine.

>> In the case of OSGeo4W the main restrictions is that we should not be
>> distributing GRASS in such a way that proprietary drivers like the MrSID
>> driver can be used without the user having knowingly combined them by
>> themselves.
>
>
> Another reason I don't like this is that it puts us square in the middle of
> the GPL vs commercial software war which I don't think we have been so
> interested in fighting.

I'll just note I do not see this as a war to fight.  I am just
trying to make it easier for software distributors to act
responsibly with regard to licensing requirements of various
components.

 >  IMO, we shouldn't try to protect users from having
> to care about this stuff, because they clearly need to understand the ground
> rules if they're going to choose to make a porridge of GPL and proprietary
> software.
>
> There's nothing preventing a user from manually registering only the drivers
> they need at runtime now.  If they need to register only non-GPL drivers, or
> non-proprietary ones, they can do so.  I completely agree this doesn't solve
> OSGeo4W's problem.

You refer to "user" above, but I assume you are referring to
application developers and software distributors.  I agree that
this RFC is not intended to absolve them of all awareness of the
licensing of components they are distributing.

> I do not formally object to this RFC with a veto, and I expect that it will
> be implemented, but I wanted to voice my opinion that I think this is a
> slippery, slippery slope.

You concerns have moderately sapped my interest in the RFC.  As discussed
in IRC it seems that the fact that the user must separately select
packages like gdal-mrsid may be sufficient to protect OSGeo from
license violation claims.  I am going to try seeking input from the
QGIS, and perhaps GRASS communities about their intent when applying
the GPL license to their software.  Beyond the strict legalities, I
am interested in accounting for the intent of developers of GPL
software.

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