License needed!

[Bernhard Reiter]

Sorry to bother you with that topic again, 
but the matter is of great importance for the GRASS community.

	GRASS still does not come with a real license [1].
        --------------------------------------------------

In a mail to the developers in May I explained the problems
and suggested that GRASS should be clearly licensed as free software. [2]
After a bit of discussion I formulated another pledge for this cause. [3]
I received feedback from a significant number of people, which shared
my concerns and views in that respect.

The GRASS development team at least clearly stated that they own the
copyright to GRASS, which is an improvement IIRC. But a license
is still needed and it hurds GRASS and the community that it does not
come with a clear free software license.

Markus Neteler and Bruce Byar are well aware of the situation.
The last I heard from it was that they work on the problem with legal 
help at Baylor. What is the status of this?

In addressing this problem again with this mail, I hope bringing on more
support for this topic. Any week that passes GRASS misses the chance
to come with your favourite GNU/Linux distribution, may it me Mandrake,
Debian or something else!

	Bernhard

[1]	http://www.baylor.edu/~grass/copyright.html
[2] 	http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~eicksch/GRASS-Help/msg02105.html
[3]	http://earth.uni-muenster.de/~eicksch/GRASS-Help/msg02195.html

-- 
Research Assistant, Geog Dept UM-Milwaukee, USA.    (www.uwm.edu/~bernhard)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure              (ffii.org)
CEO Intevation GmbH  [A Free Software Company]
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