[GRASS5] New info on openDWG

Bernhard Reiter bernhard at intevation.de
Mon Aug 30 06:41:01 EDT 2004


On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:05:08PM -0700, Michael Barton wrote:
> So I called them this morning. I had a good discussion with Aaron Dahlberg,
> membership coordinator with the Open Design Alliance. He assured me that the
> alliance's intent was only to restrict or control commercial use of their
> libraries, not use in educational or free software. 

From the other answer it should be clear that this contradicts itself.
Free Software includes the freedom to you the software 
for commcerial purposes.
So the main problem is that the alliance does not publish Free Software
and by that restricting its use in education and science.


> > Dear New Associate Member :
> > 
> > I have given you access to the DWG files according to the Associate Member
> > Agreement.  We allow access to our libraries for research purposes and
> > development of free or internally used software only.

They probably mean gratis proprietary software.

> Unless there is some catch to the GRASS GPL license that I am missing (quite
> possible, I suppose, given my lack of legal expertise), I think we can
> distribute openDWG libraries with GRASS as long as we don't sell GRASS
> commercially--something prohibited by the GPL license.
> 
> I'd like to reopen discussion about whether we can include a functional
> v.in.dwg in GRASS 5.7 under these circumstances. In my conversation with the
> alliance this morning, Aaron was clear that this was not a problem. I've
> included below the complete (longish) text of my email correspondence with
> the alliance today.
> 
> For those of you are have worked closely with relevant licensing issues,
> what do you think?

I guess that Mr. Dahlberg does not know what Free Software is
and what the implications for education are.
It might be helpful to explain it to him.
Chances are low that they share the interest here so we might think
about putting more political pressure on them if we can.


> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Michael Barton [mailto:michael.barton at asu.edu]
> > Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 11:45 AM
> > To: pat at opendesign.com
> > Cc: Markus Neteler
> > Subject: Re: Per our conversation 8/26/04 - OpenDWG

> > On 8/26/04 9:26 AM, "ODA Membership Coordinator" <pat at opendesign.com> wrote:

> > GRASS certainly fits the next paragraph.
> > 
> >> - Freeware applications, eligible for distribution under the Associate
> >> membership agreement, can not be adjuncts to commercial sales.  This
> >> would include premiums and programs with proprietary functionality.

No, GRASS does not fit that description.

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