[Incubator] Bezitopo and PerfectTIN

[Jody Garnett]

>
>
> Can you recommend a Markdown editor, or at least viewer, so that I can see
> what it'll look like before I commit it?
>

Just checking, edit the file directly on GitHub gives you a chance to
preview and see what the result looks like.

Here is my experiment: https://github.com/phma/bezitopo/pull/8

>
> > 2. Open Source
> > - File headers have LGPL boilerplate, indicating "You should have
> received
> > a copy of the GNU General Public License and Lesser General Public
> License
> > along with Bezitopo"
> > - I do not see a LICENSE.txt or LICENSE.md included in the source code
> > repository? ...
> > - aside: Amusingly GitHub picked up
> > <https://github.com/phma/bezitopo/community> that the COPYING file was
> GPL,
> > and I see COPYING.LESSER is LGPL. These two do not mix!
> > - Can you explain why two licenses are present? The terms of GPL mean
> that
> > any LGPL code you are bundling here is actually distributed as GPL...
>
> See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-howto.html . Putting software under
> the
> LGPL requires both files. One is the GPL; the other says that the software
> may
> be combined with other programs that are not (L)GPL licensed under certain
> conditions.
>

That is ... very interesting. Not sure I have sen that before (many of the
programs I know that use LGPL use the earlier 2.x version).

Reading on that page it appears your header does not need to reference both
licenses:

> This statement should go near the beginning of every source file, close
to the copyright notices. When using the Lesser GPL, insert the word
“Lesser” before “General” in all three places. When using the GNU AGPL,
insert the word “Affero” before “General” in all three places.

Still I an interested I have not seen this before, checking:
https://github.com/search?l=&q=filename%3ACOPYING.LESSER&type=Code
- shows 37054 repositories with COPYING.LESSER
- randomly clicking on them shows about 50/50 having both files

So thanks I have learned something today :)

Transmer, one of the Bezitopo programs, is GPL licensed because it uses the
> FFTW library. But it's not installed and only developers have any reason
> to
> use it. Transmer computes coefficients for transverse Mercator
> projections,
> which are in a file included in the source distribution.
>

That is interesting, so that specific program is GPL only. Thanks for
taking the time to explain.

Part of Bezitopo is a library, which I've used in some personal projects,
> and
> which a company is proposing to use as a plugin to another CAD program.
> PerfectTIN is not yet a library, but another company wants to call it from
> their program.
>
> In Quadlods (not geospatial), the library is one source file and its
> header,
> and the rest of the program is GPL licensed. I didn't do that with
> Bezitopo
> because the library is many files.
>
> > 3. Accepts contributions
> > - AUTHORS <https://github.com/phma/bezitopo/blob/master/AUTHORS> shows
> one
> > person
> > - pull-requests <https://github.com/phma/bezitopo/pulls> shows 0, ...
> > - Recommend adding a CONTRIBUTING.md (shown to contributors when they
> make
> > a pull-request) so you can be clear the project is open to working with
> > others
>
> What should go in the CONTRIBUTING file?
>

It can be really short, what I tend to cover is:
- We welcome contributions - thank you
- Please follow our source code convention
- Please include a test case, and update the documentation
- Reminder this is an open source project and you are giving permission to
share your contribution with others

Here are some examples:
- https://github.com/OSGeo/PROJ/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
- https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
- https://github.com/GeoNode/geonode/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

As I mentioned earlier, I've had no offers of contributions. I've asked for
> contributions to Bezitopo years ago, and I've had some "help wanted"
> issues in
> Github, but no one's offered to help with the issues. Back in 2015,
> someone
> tried to help, but he didn't write any code, and it turned out that he
> didn't
> understand what he was doing.
>

I completely understand, what we are doing here is double checking you have
thought about having contributors. Many companies start an open source
project, but did not bother to think through the consequences. Example if
they accept a contribution they no longer have exclusive copyright over the
work.

>
> Pierre
> --
> ve ka'a ro klaji la .romas. se jmaji
>
>
>
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