Changes between Version 3 and Version 4 of rfc34_license_policy


Ignore:
Timestamp:
Jan 30, 2011, 8:49:16 AM (13 years ago)
Author:
warmerdam
Comment:

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  • rfc34_license_policy

    v3 v4  
    1919== Rationale ==
    2020
    21 GDAL/OGR is distributed under the Non-Reciprocal MIT/X open source license which facilitates it's use by proprietary and open source applications, and facilitates the inclusion of proprietary format drivers along side the open source format drivers.  However, it is still a license violation to distribute reciprocally licensed applications (like GRASS) which use GDAL with proprietary licensed drivers (such as the MrSID, ECW or Oracle drivers).  Likewise, it is a license violation to distribute proprietary applications with reciprocally licensed drivers such as the GDAL GRASS driver.
     21GDAL/OGR is distributed under the Non-Reciprocal MIT/X open source license which facilitates it's use by proprietary and open source applications, and facilitates the inclusion of proprietary format drivers along side the open source format drivers.  However, it is still a license violation to distribute reciprocally licensed applications (like QGIS and GRASS) which use GDAL with proprietary licensed drivers (such as the MrSID, ECW or Oracle drivers).  Likewise, it is a license violation to distribute proprietary applications with reciprocally licensed drivers such as the GDAL GRASS driver, or the PDF driver.
    2222
    2323This RFC, and the improvements it promotes are intended to facilitate users, applications and drivers setting and following license policies to avoid unintentional license violations.  One area this can be particularly helpful is broad software distributions like [http://osgeo4w.osgeo.org OSGeo4W].
    … …  
    4040
    4141 * "RECIPROCAL": the application is licensed under a reciprocal license such as the GPL, and no proprietary drivers should be loaded.
    42  * "PROPRIETARY": the application has some licensing restrictions which make it ineligible for distribution with reciprocally licensed software.  Care will be taken to avoid loading reciprocally licensed drivers, such as the GRASS driver.
     42 * "PROPRIETARY": the application has some licensing restrictions which make it ineligible for distribution with reciprocally licensed software.  Care will be taken to avoid loading reciprocally licensed drivers, such as the GRASS and PDF drivers.
    4343 * "DEFAULT": the application does not apply any licensing restrictions.  This is typical of non-GPL open source applications such as MapServer, and will be the default policy if nothing is declared.
    4444
    … …  
    6969
    7070I believe the following drivers should be marked as "PROPRIETARY":
    71 
    7271 * ECW
    7372 * JP2ECW
    … …  
    8584
    8685I believe the following drivers should be marked as "RECIPROCAL":
     86 * grass (raster and vector)
     87 * EPSILON
     88 * MySQL (depending on active license terms!)
     89 * PDF
     90 
     91Unresolved:
     92 * The OGR SOSI driver should probably be marked as proprietary currently as it relies on linking with binary objects with unknown licencing terms, even if apparently the ultimate goal seems to open source them.
     93 * I'm a bit confused by http://gdal.org/frmt_msg.html. Seems that it relies on third party stuff with both proprietary and GPL code.
     94 * I am unsure about the ODBC based drivers.  I suppose PGEO and MSSQLSPATIAL drivers ought to be marked proprietary too?  Might it depend on the actual license terms of the odbc library?   
    8795
    88  * grass (raster and vector)
    89 
    90 I am unsure about the ODBC based drivers.  I suppose PGEO and MSSQLSPATIAL drivers ought to be marked proprietary too?  Please let me know of other drivers needing marking.
     96Please let me know of other drivers needing marking.
    9197
    9298== Test Suite ==