[GRASS5] v.in.dwg license problem

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 11:50:52AM +0200, Radim Blazek wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 May 2003 07:25 pm, Bernhard Reiter 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.
> 
> Why? Which paragraph of GPL exactly is violated by v.in.dwg SOURCE
> CODE distribution.

I've had a phone conversation with Markus to explain the more
subtle things in licensing.

> > I see no viable alternative than to remove the current v.in.dwg

Despite that licensing problem as already suggest by myself,
we should still publish that code with a big warning sticker on it
outside of the core GRASS5.1 repository. It solves a problem
for some people now, which makes it an improvemet to have,
thought the situation is not satisfying because of the license.

> > and work on a replacement based on a Free Software license
> > (compatable with GRASS' license).
(and spirit, I should add)

I want to explore this further in this post.

> > DIME or dxflib might be a starting point for development.
> 
> OpenDWG was not choosen by chance. 
> DIME: C++ (not welcome in GRASS)
>       DXF only (no DWG)
>       versions 10-14 guaranteed only (missing 2000 and 2002)

Though being C++, it is Free Software.
Having a import/-export module which depends on a C++,
because we don't have a C version is acceptable, because it is optional.

> dxflib: C++
>         DXF only 
>         "It's at the moment very simple ..." (from home page)

We might want to check how simple it actually is.


Because of our conversation, Wolgang Lueck pointed out to me
that QCAD under GNU GPL has the ability to handle DXF files. 
We could check if their support is better then DIME or dxflib
and suitable for GRASS purposes.

As an development direction, maybe we should focus our work to
integrate it into GDAL, though the win for Free Software would even
be higher.

What do you think Radim?
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