[ZOO-Discuss] API license

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

(I'm not subscribed to the zoo-discuss list; please forward appropriately.)

On Apr 5, 2011, at 6:33 AM, ext Bart van den Eijnden wrote:

> Hi Nick,
> 
> I am no expert on licensing.
> 
> Chris, any chance you can shed some light on this? TIA.

I won't speak on the LGPL/proj issues, as I'm not an expert in that,
and I think that you'd be better seeking assistance from the proj4js
project on that front.

OpenLayers does not require you to relicense your code, and the BSD
and MIT licenses are both similarly worded 'permissive' licenses that
do not particularly limit what you do with the licensing of the rest of 
your code. 

Your obligations are:
 1. To include the license text in the materials you distribute with your
    project. (OpenLayers does this by including license text in the OpenLayers.js
    file, because Javascript is sort of weird in what 'distribution' means; generally,
    this just means a set of LICENSE files in the root of your project.)

 2. To include in your documentation the OpenLayers copyright line, which reads:

  Copyright (c) 2005-2011 OpenLayers Contributors. See authors.txt for
    full list.
    
    (You should also include authors.txt somewhere, or at least link to it.)
 
 3. You can not use the fact that you are using OpenLayers as the OpenLayers
    project 'endorsing' ZOO. (I don't think this would ever be a problem, but
    there it is.)

I do not see any reason that I would recommend moving away from the MIT license
for your code. I do not even think that Proj4js/LGPL would require this, but
they may require that the distribution you make (that is, the combination of your
MIT code with the LGPL code) is licensed under the LGPL. I don't know enough
about it to say.

Best of luck,
Chris



> Best regards,
> Bart
> 
> -- 
> Looking for flexible support on OpenLayers or GeoExt? Please check out http://www.osgis.nl/support.html
> 
> Bart van den Eijnden
> OSGIS
> bartvde at osgis.nl
> 
> On Apr 5, 2011, at 12:26 PM, nicolas bozon wrote:
> 
>> Hello again Bart, all
>> 
>> After this morning modifications, I am now wondering about the license used for the ZOO API.
>> 
>> As you may have noticed, the whole ZOO Project is licensed under the MIT license.
>> 
>> As we are using parts of the OL code, does that mean that we should switch from MIT to BSD ?
>> Same thing for proj4js, from MIT to LGPL ?
>> 
>> Many thanks for any hint.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Nick  
>> 
>> 
>> 2011/4/5 nicolas bozon <nicolas.bozon at gmail.com>
>> Hi Bart,
>> 
>> Thank you very much for pointing out this issue.
>> 
>> The ZOO API files were just corrected.
>> 
>> The OpenLayers copyright was added as you suggested, under our original copyright block:
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.zoo-project.org/trac/browser/trunk/zoo-api/js/ZOO-api.js
>> 
>> The Proj4js authors and license were also added here:
>> 
>> http://www.zoo-project.org/trac/browser/trunk/zoo-api/js/ZOO-proj4js.js
>> 
>> Thanks again and see you in Denver i guess !
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Nick
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 2011/4/4 Bart van den Eijnden (OSGIS) <bartvde at osgis.nl>
>> 
>> Hey Zoo-tribe,
>> 
>> the code in ZOO-api.js clearly contains some copies of parts of the
>> OpenLayers code, but where is the OpenLayers copyright? Can you please add
>> this somewhere?
>> 
>> TIA.
>> 
>> http://www.zoo-project.org/trac/browser/trunk/zoo-api/js/ZOO-api.js
>> 
>> Best regards,
>> Bart
>> 
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>> 
>