[osgeo4w-dev] Click through proprietary licensing

hayashi at apptec.co.jp hayashi at apptec.co.jp
Fri Nov 12 02:14:15 EST 2010


Hi Frank,

As implementation,
It's mean each package need own licence page or corrected one page only show
 and click in the install process?

| I don't have a problem with having users click through license text 
| during the postinstall if the user selects such a package.  The 
| challenges will be modifying the cygwin setup code to make this happen 
| of course.
| 
| -jeff
| 
| 
| 
| On 10-11-12 12:18 PM, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
| > Folks,
| >
| > We have come to the conclusion that we can't really distribute the OCI
| > (oracle client interface) libraries as an OSGeo4W package without forcing
| > people to agree to a click through license first.
| >
| > Howard and I were discussing the possibility of implementing a mechanism
| > in the OSGeo4W package manager to present custom license text for a package
| > and force the user to decide if they are willing to comply with it before
| > a package is installed.
| >
| > There are some technical challenges to making this work, but I'm really
| > writing today to ask this community how it feels about inclusion of
| > proprietary software in OSGeo4W and putting click-through licenses in front
| > of people.
| >
| > I personally have a few concerns.
| >
| > 1) It pisses me off to feel I'm having to bend over backwards to help
| > proprietary software vendors assert their rights over OSGeo4W users.
| >
| > 2) We really ought to become more aware of the implications of mixing
| > proprietary software and GPLed software in OSGeo4W. For instance, it is
| > not legal for us to distribute proprietary software that would be used
| > by a GPLed package like GRASS. In fact we are likely already in violation
| > of this when GRASS uses the MrSID driver (though Lizardtech bent over
| > backwards to make sure we didn't have to put our users through a click
| > through license for it).
| >
| > On the other hand, OSGeo has taken the position of building bridges between
| > proprietary and free software. In particular of being supportive of things
| > like being able to use MapServer against proprietary databases, supporting
| > proprietary file formats and such. So I don't feel that including such
| > bridges in our distributed packages is unreasonable.
| >
| > Also, I am keen to provide the best user experience I reasonably can for
| > OSGeo4W users and being able to include some proprietary components could
| > certainly go a long way to making that work (ie. ECW SDK, OCI, ...)
| >
| > So, anyone else have a strong opinion on the matter?
| >
| 
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