Mystery solved. As Dave noticed, the code in Apache XML Commons was committed [1] in 2001, however the commit message gives an original path under /xmlgraphics/batik/. The class appeared as part of Apache Batik at the same time, with the same commit message. After a great deal of Googling I found an e-mail [2] on the Batik mailing list from Vincent Hardy, a Sun employee and co-founder of the Batik project, which mentions Sun’s contribution of TIFF code to the project. So the origin of the code was indeed Sun, but there are no issues with the licensing.
As it happens, Sun's 2005 update to ImageIO is not strictly under BSD as they added this particularly silly clause: "You acknowledge that this software is not designed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.” -- John [1] http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/xmlgraphics/commons/trunk/src/java/org/apache/xmlgraphics/image/codec/tiff/TIFFFaxDecoder.java?revision=199900&view=markup [2] http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/xmlgraphics-batik-dev/200105.mbox/%[email protected]%3E -- John On 9 Feb 2014, at 12:20, John Hewson <[email protected]> wrote: >> Which part? > > Ignore me, I didn’t notice the rest of the e-mail. You’re quite right. > > It’s not at all obvious where the code really came from. I’d be very surprised > if Sun were going around removing Apache copyright from code and adding > their own, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing their lawyers would let them > do. Perhaps it’s more likely that they originated from a common source which > had looser copyright restrictions, but what? > > I shall do some investigating. > > -- John > > On 9 Feb 2014, at 12:14, John Hewson <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> Not sure that this is really the case. >> >> Which part? >> >> -- John >> >> On 9 Feb 2014, at 12:11, Dave Fisher <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi John, >>> >>> Not sure that this is really the case. >>> >>> On Feb 9, 2014, at 11:14 AM, John Hewson wrote: >>> >>>> Hi All >>>> >>>> It seems that we have some Sun Microsystems code in PDFBox, namely >>>> TIFFFaxDecoder: >>>> http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/pdfbox/trunk/pdfbox/src/main/java/org/apache/pdfbox/filter/TIFFFaxDecoder.java?view=markup >>>> which is clearly from: >>>> https://github.com/geosolutions-it/imageio-ext/blob/master/plugin/tiff/src/main/java/it/geosolutions/imageioimpl/plugins/tiff/TIFFFaxDecompressor.java >>>> (note: it was easier to link to image-io-ext but the original file may >>>> well be from plain old image-io) >>>> >>>> It seems that the origin of this code is Apache XML Graphics Commons: >>>> http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/xmlgraphics/commons/trunk/src/java/org/apache/xmlgraphics/image/codec/tiff/TIFFFaxDecoder.java?view=markup >>>> (note the missing Sun copyright) >>> >>> The initial Apache checkin was in 2001[1] while the Sun copyright is 2005. >>> Deeper analysis would be required before your conclusion is proven. >>> >>> It could as easily be said that the Sun version derived from the XML >>> Graphics version, or that they both derived from the same source. >>> >>>> >>>> The good news is that the Image IO code is under the BSD license, so it >>>> shouldn’t be >>>> impossible to resolve this, but what should we do? >>> >>> What is this BSD version and what is its history? >>> >>> These all implement an CCITT and ANSI standard from the 1950's most >>> recently enhanced in 1992. [2] ANSI standards are public domain. >>> >>> Regards, >>> Dave >>> >>> PS. INAL. >>> >>> [1] >>> http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/xmlgraphics/commons/trunk/src/java/org/apache/xmlgraphics/image/codec/tiff/TIFFFaxDecoder.java?revision=199900&view=markup >>> >>> [2] http://www.fileformat.info/mirror/egff/ch09_05.htm >>> >> >
