Emil Zegers wrote:
Hello list,
From a contact at ITC I've heard that ILWIS will become open source
under the GPL license.
Hello,
that is good to hear!
More info is available on the 52 Degrees North website
http://www.52north.org/
Emil Zegers
FYI - there has been some discussion in the past that 52N is actually not an Open Source Project but registered as a for profit company in Germany. The website proposes some <judgmental> dubious </judgmental> ideas about licensing attesting a pretty closed shop mentality regarding governance. Currently the web site is down so it is difficult to find out more.
The sections in the web site regarding double licensing as GPL and xxx?,
governance, CLA, etc. have been changed a dozen times in the past year, they
are still finding out themselves. They have repeatedly signaled interest in
associating more with OSGeo and also appeared at last years Intergeo OSGeo's
Open Source Park (I still owe a report). This was followed by a flame on the
German mailing list when it became public that ESRI USA is shareholder of 52N.
One of the other shareholders of 52N is conterra. As of summer 2006 ESRI
Germany is major shareholder of conterra. If I was paranoid I would see ESRI
taking over Open Source (whatever that would mean).
When I was talking to an ESRI representative (it says "Spatial Data Infrastructure Global Manager" on the bcard) and she was very interested in what they should or could do with 52N now. They simply do not know and want to learn. Maybe it is just that. I don't know.
One of the few things that I do know is some of the people working in 52N projects - and they are very normal people doing good work. It is just not transparent at all what the plans for, with and around 52N are. As it is a business and not an Open Source project I see no way that this could change.
Best regards,
Arnulf.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sajith VK
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 4:46 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [OSGeo-Discuss] Fwd: [Free-gis] ILWIS to become freeware
Hello all,
ILWIS, a popular GIS developed by the International Institute for
Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), The Netherlands, is
to be made freeware from July 1st, 2007.
It may be good if we can persuade them to release it under GPL, or
any other Free software License. I think OSGeo is the right group to
communicate with ITC people and persuade them to release it as
a free software...
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