MapServer and GPL dependencies...

[Paul Spencer]

Would it be worth (Steve) contacting the maintainer and asking if he  
would be willing to release under LGPL (perhaps with an explicit  
exception for MapServer)?  From the news item on the agg site,

"Current AGG users who are willing to continue using AGG under the  
old terms and conditions are encouraged to contact me and I will  
consider their requests."

I really think this could hurt MapServer in general, and just lead to  
wide-spread confusion at best ... I think a bunch of users would end  
up violating the license without even realising it.

Cheers

Paul

On 8-Nov-06, at 10:22 AM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> Howard Butler wrote:
>> It's unfortunate that they didn't go LGPL...  I'm not a licensing  
>> zealot, but it might be a problem for some folks using MapServer.   
>> I suppose our transition to AGG would be gradual and people might  
>> initially have the option of not using AGG.  I'm concerned,  
>> however, that having parallel renderers, with one being  
>> functionally and qualitatively much better than the other will  
>> cause all of the development momentum to move toward AGG.  If that  
>> happens over the course of a couple of releases, do we effectively  
>> limit our licensing and deployment to GPL?
>
> Folks,
>
> I'm also very concerned about using AGG as our primary renderer, that
> is the one that gets all the love in the future, if it is GPL.  This
> may be construed as limiting ways that mapserver can be used quite a
> bit.
>
> For instance, it would definitely be contrary to the GPL license for
> us to distribute a MapServer linked with Oracle or SDE client  
> libraries
> and AGG.  Or to include a GDAL that has Kakadu JPEG2000 or MrSID  
> support
> linked in.   So anyone wanting to use such binaries would be required
> to build them for themselves since redistribution would be illegal.
>
> Basically, distributing MapServer with AGG casts a long shadow over
> all other things linked into the binaries (including shared  
> libraries).
>
> I don't think that the GPL would impact applications written on top
> of MapServer using mapscript but I'm not absolutely sure of this.
>
> So my position is that if we want a "next generation renderer" and if
> we have a non-GPL alternative to AGG, we should prefer the non-GPL
> alternative all else being reasonable equal.  I, for one, will not
> ever be able to distribute a GPL restricted component in FWTools.  I
> am already unable to distribute FWTools binaries with GRASS support
> because the GRASS libraries are GPL.
>
> All that said, there is no harm in incorporating AGG as an optional
> reader, as long as we understand it will only be useful to part of
> the community.
>
> PS. Sorry for middle posting.
>
> Best regards,
>
>> On Nov 8, 2006, at 12:04 AM, Steve Lime wrote:
>>> Hi folks: We've been looking at AGG as a possible alternative  
>>> renderer
>>> to GD for some time now. One thing that has just popped up in the  
>>> AGG
>>> camp is a license switch with it's latest release. It is now GPL.  I
>>> don't believe there's a reason to not consider AGG because of that
>>> (PostGIS is GPL), correct?
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>
>
> -- 
> --------------------------------------- 
> +--------------------------------------
> I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam,  
> warmerdam at pobox.com
> light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
> and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http:// 
> osgeo.org

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Paul Spencer                          pspencer at dmsolutions.ca    |
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|Chief Technology Officer                                         |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
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