Thanks for talking to us - open source license audits happen all the time
and we appreciate you bringing these issues to the community.
As for vecmath - it is a good concern, and one that has been raised as part
of the IP review being done by LocationTech (for a couple of projects that
use GeoTools such as uDig).
We primarily use vecmath for a decent implementation of matrix, and you can
see some previous email discussions on how we can replace this library.
When I last looked there was no clear "winner" in this space and one of the
developers volunteered to code up the little bit of math we depend on
directly in GeoTools.
Doing a web search shows me adding this to "technical debt" in or wiki:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/GEOTOOLS/Replace+Vecmath (work that needs
to be done for the good of the community but is not cool enough to attract
a volunteer or funding).
You may consider joining the locationtech email list
<https://locationtech.org/mailman/listinfo/location-iwg> and talk this over
with other concerned projects. The best case would be to gather up enough
funding to support a developer replacing the use of vecmath in GeoTools. If
you really need a quick turn around our support page lists some commercial
support <http://docs.geotools.org/latest/userguide/welcome/support.html>
options.
--
Jody
--
Jody Garnett
On 11 December 2014 at 06:24, Dieter De Paepe <dieter.depa...@comsof.com>
wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> my company recently had an open-source licensing audit, and our lawyer
> uttered some concerns about the vecmath library, which is a dependency of
> GeoTools. The discussion is still in progress, but I'd thought I'd share
> this so that the community could learn (or help clear up) any issues...
>
> Currently, Geotools uses vecmath 1.3.2 as one of its dependencies. The
> most recent version 1.5.2 has been considered in GEOT-2660
> <http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GEOT-2660>, and was found to be working,
> but was never used. The central maven repository only contains 1.3.1.
> Version 1.3.2 and 1.5.2 can be found on the osgeo maven repository, they
> have probably been uploaded by members of this community.
>
> Vecmath 1.3.2 (and 1.5.1) is part of the Java3D <https://java3d.java.net/>
> package,
> which is available under the Sun Binary Code License
> <http://download.java.net/media/java3d/builds/release/1.3.2/BINARY-CODE-LICENSE.txt>.
> GEOT-22 <http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GEOT-22> mentions vecmath is
> available under the Java Distribution License, but the link is broken, and
> the current page of that project <https://java.net/projects/vecmath> does
> not list any usable information or a download.
>
> Since no "official" download is available, I'm assuming vecmath is part of
> the Java3D suite. The license for Java3D demands that the Java3D files are
> distributed as a whole, it is therefor not allowed to distribute only
> vecmath. Strangely enough, inside the vecmath jar, another license is
> bundled: the Java Research license (for non commercial use) or the Java
> Distribution License (for commercial use)... Note that the Java3D project
> page mentions the source for vecmath is GPL with CPE, but I'm not sure how
> this affects the jars...
>
> Our lawyer mentioned that both the BCL and JDL are outdated Sun licenses
> for which Oracle isn't quite clear on how to handle it. He says the best
> solution would be to avoid them. Does anyone know some more detailed
> information about the licensing terms of vecmath?
>
> While looking around, I came across something interesting. Apparently,
> some new life has blown into the Java3D project, as you can find in this
> blog post
> <https://gouessej.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/java-3d-est-de-retour-java-3d-is-back>
> and the corresponding github <https://github.com/hharrison/java3d-core>.
> It may be worth checking out. (It uses a GPL with CPE license.)
>
> Regards,
> Dieter
>
>
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