OSSIM Code Provenance Review

The OSSIM code base has been reviewed. The provenance review needs to follow the guidelines put forward in:

​http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Code_Provenance_Review

OSSIM Library/Component Review

• No external libraries are included in the source tree.

• All external library dependences are available under a compatible license. These dependencies are: LibTiff, GeoTiff, mpi, OpenThreads, and OpenSceneGraph
• OSSIM incorporates a plugin architecture to wrap useful external functionality. For example, GDAL is considered to be a default plugin and we have incorporated comments and clarifications from authors of those projects.

Code Copyright Review

The objective here is to visit every source file, and identify possible issues, and work to "regularize" things.

• Does the file include the license information? If not, add it if there there is no ambiguity about whether the standard project license applies. If that is not obvious, make notes in the review document.
  • Most c/cpp files in the SVN repository have a header. Most java files and some .h files do not. Have requested that Scott Bortman start adding those files to the OMAR/Java section. We have essentially completed this effort, will continue to correct instances that we have missed and follow the guidelines for the creation of new files.

• Is the file under the normal project license? If not, make notes in the review document.
  • Not all projects in the repository use the same license, but that should not be an issue. Files within the same project share the same license.

• Is there anything obviously unusual about the origin of the code? Does this pose any conflicts? Is the issue properly described in the source file?
  • No unusual origins noted.

• Maintain a list of all copyright holders identified in the review document. This list is essentially everyone who would need to agree to relicense the project.
  • Copyright Holders: Mark Lucas, Garrett Potts, Dave Burken, Scott Bortman

Most files contain a notice of the form:

// The OSSIM distribution is licensed under LGPL
// See the LICENSE.txt in the ossim folder for details
//

The License.txt in the OSSIM main directory contains:

The OSSIM tree embeds some code from other libraries as well new code.  We will describe the license terms of the embedded modules as well as the license of the ossim core engine.  All code derived or embedded in the ossim core engine should not restrict the use of commercial purposes.

1.  OSSIM engine abides by the LGPL license terms.  We grant you the use of the OSSIM core engine in commercial or non commercial use without royalty as long as the credits for the original authors stay within the source code.  See the top level LGPL.txt found found here along side the LICENSE.txt.

2.  shapelib.  The shape library was written by Frank Warmerdam and has an MIT Style license these files include:
       dbfopen.c shpopen.c shptree.c
and are located in src/ossim/vec directory.  They have the following copyright 
******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 1999, Frank Warmerdam
 *
 * This software is available under the following "MIT Style" license,
 * or at the option of the licensee under the LGPL (see LICENSE.LGPL).  This
 * option is discussed in more detail in shapelib.html.
 *
 * --
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
 * copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"),
 * to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation
 * the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
 * and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
 * Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
 *
 * The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
 * in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
 *
 * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
 * OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
 * FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL
 * THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
 * LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
 * FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER
 * DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.



3. The matrix library was written by Robert Davies.  At the time of download the site was located at http://www.robertnz.net. He gives free use in commercial and non commercial as long as his code remains in tact and the credits for the author are known.

4. The kbool library does polygon boolean operation and is used by the ossimPolyArea2d class.  The license terms are based on the wxwidgets licensing which gives free use in commercial and non-commercial libraries.  At the time of download the module used could be found at: http://boolean.klaasholwerda.nl/download/download.html

5. Geotrans.  The geotrans library is a set of map projections that are certified and hosted by NGA.  They give free use in commercial and non commercial software packages and at the time of download the geotrans modules could be found at http://earth-info.nga.mil/GandG/geotrans/.  We have embedded the datum, ellipsoid, and map projections into the ossim baseline and wrapped in C++ classes so to remove the global variable access common in the raw getorans c library.