Licencing of gdal-filegdb in OSGeo4W ?

[rouault]

Ragi,

I believe that you have added the gdal-filegdb package in OSGeo4W. Did you think about the licencing implications ? At the minimum, I think you should provide a file with the licence of the FileGDB dll.

Best regards,

Even

[jef]

fixed in 1.9.2-1. The ESRI DLL was removed.

The license states:

[...]
4.2 Uses Not Permitted
[...]
b.  Except as provided herein, Licensee shall not redistribute Software, Data, or Web Services to third parties, in whole or in part, including, but not limited to, extensions, components, or DLLs.
[...]
The scope of use for the Software, Data, Web Services, and Documentation identified below is described in
the applicable footnotes identified in parentheses.

Software

 Esri File Geodatabase API (47)

47. Licensee may develop and distribute software or web applications that use the Esri File Geodatabase API to Licensee's end users.

The Footnote 47 might be intended to allow redistributions of the DLL, but it doesn't clearly state so.

[rburhum]

Sorry for the late reply.

I had an explicit e-mail from ESRI stating that I was allowed to add the dll. Nevertheless, taking it out and having people agree to it explicitly is OK, too. All we need to do is e-mail ESRI directly if we want/need some other clarification.

[maphew]

I too have an email, from Esri Canada, stating that inclusion of the runtime dll is okay, "The answer is that yes, it can be distributed to your end users.". Yesterday I asked for a statement we could include in the download package alongside license.txt to make things clearer (as opposed to just copying the email thread into a text file).

For reference the Case# is 138661.

[tamas]

Replying to rburhum:

Sorry for the late reply.

I had an explicit e-mail from ESRI stating that I was allowed to add the dll. Nevertheless, taking it out and having people agree to it explicitly is OK, too. All we need to do is e-mail ESRI directly if we want/need some other clarification.

Is this just a single permission for OSGeo4W specifically, or the other binary distributors could also apply this license? This kind of inconsistency from ESRI is quite confusing.

[maphew]

Here's an abridged and reformatted confirmation reply I received from Esri and Esri Canada. I'll make the full thread available also.

From: "support@…" <support@…>
To: Matt.Wilkie <Matt.Wilkie@…>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:01:17 -0800
Subject: Re: Esri Canada Technical Support - Redistributing Esri FileGDB

run-time DLL {[C {[CASE#138661]}

Is this a single permission for Yukon Government and/or the OSGeo4W project specifically? or may any other binary distributor also apply this license?

Hi Matt,

This is not a single permission for Yukon Government , this message is just a confirmation that the FileGDB API Dlls can be redistributed.

[...]

Victor C.
Esri Canada Technical Support

Toll Free: 877-441-0337
E-Mail: support@…
Portal: ​http://www.esri.ca/portal/techsupport
Web: ​http://www.esri.ca/support

[maphew]

confirmation email thread for "Redistributing Esri FileGDB run-time DLL"

[jef]

fixed in 1.9.2-2