[GRASS5] v.in.dwg license problem

[Markus Neteler]

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 10:45:17PM +1200, H Bowman wrote:
> > > Noticed that v.in.dwg from GRASS 5.1
> > > (http://freegis.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/grass51/vector/v.in.dwg/)
> > > uses the proprietory library opendwg.
> > > As I believe that it also needs the GRASS libraries which
> > > are under GNU GPL, this means that v.in.dwg has a severe license
> > > problem.
> 
> see also
> http://freegis.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/grass/src.nonGPL/
> 
> I suppose the worry is that if it is included in the main source
> distribution, an over zealous packager might build it into a binary at
> some point.

Well, for this he/she had to fix a lot of code in this directory.
It is fairly outdated. Also, everything is clearly written in the
local README:

"Code in this subdirectory is not free. This code is not
 distributed under GNU General Public license."

People can always ignore things.

> I'd think having it live in CVS (with a note where to look in the
> v.in.dxf man page) should be fine- forces the user to compile it
> themselves but doesn't hide it. ???

This is the current implementation. Interesting to read is
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-faq.html#WritingFSWithNFLibs 
 
Markus