[pgrouting-dev] Licensing for Co-development between OpenGraphRouter and pgRouting

Thu Jun 2 22:12:15 EDT 2011

Ok, so if I understand the licensing issues correctly:

1. any code developed in opengraphrouter under MIT-X is good provided we 
do not introduce any GPL code into that code base.

2. we can use the opengraphrouter code in pgRouting because MIT-X is 
compatible for inclusion with GPL code and this does not pollute 
opengraphrouter code.

Does this sound correct?

This is important because Ashraf has more time to work on 
opengraphrouter and one of my goals for him is to look into getting our 
code callable from pgRouting. I want him to be more familiar with the 
issues involved in doing that and we are interested in developing an 
MIT-X licensed version of the contraction highways code in opengraphrouter.

Why use MIT-X vs GPL vs a dual license?

I do not want to start a License war thread, so I will state up front 
that all these licenses have a place and a philosophy that they support 
and everyone is entitled to their opinions. That said, I think that long 
term if we can get these working together there can be some significant 
benefits in potentially getting funding for development and porting the 
code to other environments and databases. If you looks at mapserver as 
an example they are very successful at getting funded projects - there 
are a lot of reasons for this and not all are obvious, but it is my 
strong belief that have an MIT-X license lowers the barriers to getting 
commercial companies to consider funding development. None of my 
consulting clients want any GPL v3 code in their infrastructure and they 
are extremely cautious about including GPL based components and it is a 
really hard sell to get them to consider funding GPL development.

Based on 1. and 2. above if these are true, then a dual license is 
probably not required. It would be nice if pgRouting had a dual license 
because then code could move from pgRouting back to opengraphrouter 
which would facilitate development. Under the current licensing code can 
flow from opengraphrouter to pgrouting but not the other way. This means 
we have to recreate all the tools there that we might want rather than 
create new tools. If we are successful in building an a good library 
that can be the future under pinning of pgrouting and other systems it 
seems to be a waste of effort to not reuse what you have there. A good 
example of code we might like to reuse are all the boost_*.cpp function.

Regarding CGAL, I would be all for dropping that. I have developed code 
that I'm considering adding to opengraphrouter that does the 
triangularization and contour creation. If I do that then that could be 
a potential replacement for CGAL, I also have a fast TSP routine that I 
might also contribute opengraphrouter.

-Steve

On 6/2/2011 9:36 PM, Anton Patrushev wrote:
> Hi Daniel,
>
> Doesn't this statement
>   * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
>   * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
>   * the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
>   * (at your option) any later version.
> assume later (i.e. v3) versions?
>
> I support getting rid of CGAL, but I don't think that PostGIS hulls
> fit all possible cases of Driving Distance use.
>
> Anton.
>
> On 6/3/11, Daniel Kastl<daniel at georepublic.de>  wrote:
>> 2011/6/3 Anton Patrushev<anton.patrushev at georepublic.de>
>>
>>> Hi Steve,
>>>
>>> I believe pgRouting is under GPLv3 - I think we changed from v2 last
>>> year. For me GPL/MIT dual licensing looks a bit strange, I mean I
>>> can't imagine a case when one would prefer GPL.
>>>
>>
>> No, it hasn't changed.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> MIT is GPL compatible and I see no problem with PostGIS which is also
>>> under
>>> GPL.
>>>
>>> By the way, we already have GPL/QPL compatibility issue :)
>>>
>>
>> I would like to remove CGAL dependency and just return points for driving
>> distance.
>> With PostGIS 2.0 there is also support for concave hull. Then CGAL isn't
>> necessary anymore to calculate the drive time polygon.
>>
>> Daniel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Anton.
>>>
>>> On 5/27/11, Stephen Woodbridge<woodbri at swoodbridge.com>  wrote:
>>>> Hi PSC,
>>>>
>>>> I have been talking with Roni about doing more development for
>>>> OpenGraphRouter and to possible integrate that with pgRouting. The first
>>>> issue I see is that of licensing. OpenGraphRouter is using an MIT-X
>>>> style license (and wants to stay that way) and I believe pgRouting is
>>>> using a GPLv2 License.
>>>>
>>>> So I think this means we can move OpenGraphRouter code into pgRouting,
>>>> which would make that code dual licensed, ie code used in pgRouting
>>>> would become GPLv2, but the original in OpenGraphRouter would remain
>>>> MIT-X, but we could not move pgRouting code into OpenGraphRouter.
>>>>
>>>> One of my goals as we move forward is that code we develop should be
>>>> have a reference implementation in a command line tool in
>>>> OpenGraphRouter and a reference implementation with in pgRouting.
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thoughts on the licensing issues?
>>>>
>>>> Would there be any interest in supporting a similar dual licensing in
>>>> pgRouting? This might not be possible because Postgresql/PostGIS
>>> licensing.
>>>>
>>>> Frank, Paul, can you comment please.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>     -Steve
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> pgrouting-dev mailing list
>>>> pgrouting-dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/pgrouting-dev
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
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>>> 81739 München, Germany
>>>
>>> Anton Patrushev
>>> CTO
>>>
>>> eMail: anton.patrushev at georepublic.de
>>> Web: http://georepublic.de
>>>
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>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Georepublic UG&  Georepublic Japan
>> eMail: daniel.kastl at georepublic.de
>> Web: http://georepublic.de
>>
>
>