[Geoprisma-dev] Licensing was: MapFish-trunk in external

[Frank Warmerdam]

Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
> Currently, GeoPrisma has declared its licensing is BSD. People make use 
> decisions based on that declaration. They expect that the PSC will 
> insure that the product is BSD clean.

Steve,

I believe Daniel and others understand the issues of GPL licensing as well
as I do.  I will just make a few points:

1) If a project has selected BSD as the license, it is important that the
PSC very carefully consider before adopting a dependency on GPL technology
used in a linkage relationship (such that the GPL terms apply broadly).
It is not wrong to make such a change, but it is a very significant change
for a project and the PSC is the right group to make the decision.

2) Many permissively licensed projects (like GDAL) have *optional*
dependencies on GPL components.  I don't know the technology in question
in the current discussion, but if it is practical to make it an optional
dependency of Geoprisma so that end users or distributors can practically
decide if they want the dependency with it's GPL implications then that
would be a desirable approach.

3) The reciprocal aspects of the GPL license (called viral by some) kick
in at the point of distribution.  Generally speaking using a package to
implement a web service is not considered to be distribution of that software
and the GPL terms would not kick in.  (PS. I'm not sure this is still true
of GPLv3 which at least at one point was going to try and close this "hole".)

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