[OSGeo-Standards] [OSGeo-Discuss] Lidar News magazine false statements on (L)GPL (Was REPORT: my OGC membership slot)

Sat Oct 3 06:46:38 PDT 2015

Hello,

I was hoping that Lewis Graham would see the futility of furthering his
incorrect claims on the "dangers" of the LGPL license for commercial
projects (and his other odd statements) but he continues to do so not just
in private but also in his role as the Chair of the ASRPS LAS Working Group
 This gives his FUD non-sense a very prominent outlet in front of very
influential people, so OSGeo should probably respond to this a bit more
loudly than usual.

In the "LiDAR Sidebar" at the ASPRS UAS Reno conference [1] there was a
discussion on point cloud formats that was more or less a direct
consequence of the "Open Letter" by OSGeo [2]. Lewis continued to claim
that it was impossible to make LASzip an official format because I would be
unwilling to donated it under an MIT license to the ASPRS (note: i do not
even remember being asked) and that an LGPL would be impossible and
"dangerous" for commercial companies to work with (note: nevermind the 55+
companies that already do [3]).

So I emailed the participants (my dial-in connection was shakey) the
following:

"Here a detailed rebuttal of Lewis' "LGPL of Martin's LASzip implementation
is dangerous" non-sense:
http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/lidar-news-publishes-uninformed-gpl-rant/
And yes, the currently available open LASzip format implementation (!!!)
comes with a "static linking exception" because some new devices do not
support dynamic linking well. Would be good to get someone to sponsor the
creation of an open LASzip format specification (!!!) so anyone can
reimplement it and give their resulting implementation whatever license
they see best fit. A license is only attached to a particular
implementation. From an open LASzip format specification anyone could write
their own implementation (closed or open with any license they want)."

To which Lewis answered (just repeating the same old FUD):

"Rather than entering into an inane debate over licensing with Martin, I
suggest anyone who is concerned check with their intellectual property
attorney prior to incorporating third party software into internal build
software, regardless of the license type of that third party software.  We
do a lot of software consulting and most of our more savvy clients clearly
specify what type of licensing can be incorporated into the composite
deliverables.

I also suggest that the world of software development and deployment has
become far too complex to continue to use the undefined term “open source.”
 For example, some customers have source code to the GeoCue production
software under license.  Is that Open Source?  I suggest instead that we
use terminology such as “binaries available under license XYZ” or “source
suitable for compilation available under license ABX.”"

I can not believe that Lewis himself actually believes his own statements
but uses them tactically to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. I am not
sure why. Maybe in order to stall the standardization process of LAS and
LAZ because he is somehow afraid it will loosen his grip onto the LAS
format?

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

[1] http://uasreno.org/2015/09/09/asprs-adds-lidar-sidebar-to-reno-program/
[2] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/LIDAR_Format_Letter
[3] http://laszip.org/#software-with-native-laz-support

On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 12:00 PM, Martin Isenburg <martin.isenburg at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> We (Oliver and me) had contacted the (new) editor (Roland Mangold who is
cc-ed) last week and suggested to use the contents of this blog article
>
>
http://odoepner.wordpress.com/2015/06/16/lidar-news-publishes-uninformed-gpl-rant/
>
> authored by Oliver Doepner as a factual rebuttal of Lewis Graham's FUD
rant on GPL/LGPL for publishing in the next issue of the LiDAR Magazine
(the two-month ago rebranded LiDAR News magazine). I have no final word
from the Roland yet but our communication suggested that this would happen.
Please check Oliver's column for any errors (should you care) so he can
correct them prior to this being published.
>
> Regards,
>
> Martin @rapidlasso
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 11:52 AM, Jo Cook <jocook at astuntechnology.com>
wrote:
>>
>> I think this is something that we at OSGeo should definitely respond to.
Perhaps we could contact the magazine and explain that there were some
factual errors in the article, and ask for a chance to respond?
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 21, 2015 at 10:38 AM, Johan Van de Wauw <
johan.vandewauw at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 6:31 PM, Martin Isenburg
>>> <martin.isenburg at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Another curious thing is that I (and the open source license LGPL) was
>>> > attacked vehemently in a recent column called "Open Source Mania" by
Lewis
>>> > Graham that was published in the LiDAR News magazine. Viewer
discretion
>>> > advised and parental guidance suggested ... you will not like this FUD
>>> > attack:
>>> >
>>> >
http://www.lidarmag.com/PDF/LiDARNewsMagazine_Graham-OpenSourceMania_Vol5No4.pdf
>>> >
>>>
>>> I read the article and there are a lot of statements there which are
false.
>>> " if you touch a piece of GPL code with the nine foot pole of
>>> launching it with a Python script, that script must now be GPLed"
>>> not true
>>>
>>> "Suppose you have developed some very, very clever algorithm on which
>>> you and your university have applied for a patent. If you have coded
>>> your algorithm and used any GPL whatsoever, you just GPLed your
>>> patent. The patent rights effectively transfer to the Open Software
>>> Foundation for free distribution."
>>>
>>> Completely untrue. The Open Software Foundation does not exist. You
>>> don't transfer patent rights at all. A well known counter-example is
>>> the algortihm for MP3, where the code (lame) was released under LGPL.
>>>
>>> I think as OSGeo we should reply to the statements, this is an attack
>>> on our community. Perhaps we can ask someone from the Free Software
>>> Foundation Europe to help write a response?
>>>
>>> Kind Regards,
>>> Johan
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Discuss mailing list
>>> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jo Cook
>> Astun Technology Ltd, The Coach House, 17 West Street, Epsom, Surrey,
KT18 7RL, UK
>> t:+44 7930 524 155
>> iShare - Data integration and publishing platform
>>
>> *****************************************
>>
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Registered office: 120 Manor Green Road, Epsom, Surrey, KT19 8LN VAT no.
864201149.
>
>
>
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