[gdal-dev] Licensing Policy for drivers and applications

[Ray Gardener]

On 1/31/2011 12:32 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> That would be adequate for those who are building things from source
> and wanting to distribute the resulting binaries under a single
> consistent licensing policy. However it does not help me for the
> OSGeo4W need.
>
> OSGeo4W is a unified installer... [snip]


Well, I'm definitely not a lawyer, but it sounds to me that OSGeo4W is 
in violation. I mean, they take GDAL, combine it with GPL'd code, and 
expect you to help "bless the marriage".

Why not just let OSGeo4W do its own licence management, since it's the 
one that's creating the problem. It can embed a little table inside 
itself that says which drivers are under which licence. If you move that 
logic into GDAL itself, then you'll share responsibility if a ruling 
occurs against OSGeo4W. If you keep the logic outside, then you can 
honestly claim that any violation happened beyond your control, and that 
conflicting drivers were combined into a package against your stated 
policies. The moment you have that logic internalized, you explicitly 
authorize -- or at the very least facilitate -- third parties to combine 
conflicting code in a distributable. The fact that the real damage 
doesn't happen until runtime (that the app in question happens to be an 
installer) may be a distinction that offended parties won't care to 
make. I'd prefer any perceived wrongdoing by OSGeo4W to stay firmly on 
its side.

Stallman is very leery of any tricks to workaround GPL, and this 
"creative bundling using evil bits" will smell of that. To him, the mere 
mixture in a distribution will be damage enough. At the very least, I'd 
check with him first if you haven't already, and get whatever 
concessions are offered in writing.

Ray