Code Provenance Review

This purpose of this document is to fulfill one of the requirements of the OSGeo Incubation process, the ​Code Provenance Review.

Included Components/Libraries

PostGIS includes a few files from other projects. There doesn't appear to be any licensing conflicts with the included components.

• Autoconf - stuff generated by autoconf and some helper macros
  • /autogen.sh - I suspect this is copied from something, but it's almost certainly free or X/MIT-style
  • /macros/* - m4 autoconf macros - all of these are either GPL or public domain (many are from GNU gettext)
• libtool
  • /libtool
  • /config.rpath - libtool helper - X-style free license from FSF
• OGC test suite
  • /extras/ogc_test_suite/schema.sql, queries.sql - OGC testing license, references ​http://www.opengis.org/testing/ which doesn't exist anymore
• 2010 Tiger geocoder - refers to being taken from Steven Frost's git repository (​http://www.snowman.net/git/tiger_geocoder/)
  • /extras/tiger_geocoder/tiger_2010/*
• install-sh
  • /install-sh - X license from X11R6
• Shapelib - several files copied form shapelib, possibly modified, under X/MIT License from Frank Warmerdam
  • /loader/dbfopen.c
  • /loader/safileio.c
  • /loader/shapefil.h
  • /loader/shpopen.c
• Getopt - command line option handling library - public domain from AT&T
  • /loader/getopt.c
  • /loader/getopt.h
• PG-raster - the PostGIS Raster project merged into PostGIS recently
  • /raster/* - various files in here specify GPL v3 in their headers

Copyright/Licensing Issues

Mloskot did a quick search for "copyright" to start this off: http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/attachment/ticket/840/trunk-r6856-copyright-grep.txt

• /autogen.sh - I suspect this is copied from something, but it's almost certainly free or X/MIT-style
• /config.rpath - libtool helper - X-style free license from FSF
• /doc/xsl/*.xsl - BSD licensed documentation generation scripts Copyright by Regina Obe
• /extras/ogc_test_suite/schema.sql, queries.sql - OGC testing license, references ​http://www.opengis.org/testing/ which doesn't exist anymore
• /extras/tiger_geocoder/tiger_2010/ - need to check Steve Frost's git repository for any licenses (​http://www.snowman.net/git/tiger_geocoder/)
• /install-sh - X license from X11R6
• /java/* - java libraries - everything under here is LGPL except for some examples which are GPL
• /loader/dbfopen.c, safileio.c, shapefil.h, shpopen.c - derivatives of ShapeLib under X/MIT License from Frank Warmerdam
• /loader/getopt.* - public domain from AT&T
• /macros/* - m4 autoconf macros - all of these are either GPL or public domain (many are from GNU gettext)
• /raster/* - various files in here specify GPL v3 in their headers

This ​document from softwarefreedom.org explains how it is acceptable to include code with a "permissive" licence in a GPL-licensed project. This includes the BSD and X/MIT licenses, which according to this review are the only other licenses used by code included in the PostGIS project.