Hi, It has come to my attention that some GRASS code has been ported to C++ under the Apache license, and from there is now included in GDAL/trunk as BSD licensed. It is a substantial rewrite, but I have looked through the code and there is IMO a clear lineage of the core. i.e. AFAICT it is a derivative product -- but the the main question is if any GPL'd fixes or enhancements are involved, or just reuse of CERL public domain code & algorithms?
http://www.perrygeo.net/wordpress/?p=7 http://perrygeo.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demtools/slope.cpp http://trac.osgeo.org/gdal/browser/trunk/gdal/apps/gdaldem.cpp specifically this code is derived from r.slope.aspect and r.shaded.relief. (I didn't check the color rules code although the rules format is similar.) Again, these modules are historically derived from really old CERL code, so _originally_ public domain. IMHO at minimum that should be credited. (the oldest version I have on hand to check is GRASS 4.3, 1999/GPL) But it definitely includes some of our GPL-era enhancements. (e.g. 'r.shaded.relief scale=') I'm happy for code to be reused for useful purposes, I'm not happy for GPL licensed code to be laundered into BSD with all copyright and attribution removed; which Will then be reused by someone else in a proprietary product at a rate proportional to its usefulness (and this is very useful code). As this was all done in the open, if there is any problem (& I'm not sure there is), I expect it to stem from a simple oversight. If we do feel there is some non-trivial GPL-derived code in there to claim, all authors of that code would need to agree to a relicense of it as BSD. (my guess/hope is that it is all either CERL-based or trivial changes) according to the headers, these authors have contributed to those modules: r.slope.aspect: Michael Shapiro, Marjorie Larson, and Olga Waupotitsch (original CERL contributors), Markus Neteler, Bernhard Reiter, Brad Douglas, Glynn Clements, Hamish Bowman, Jachym Cepicky, Jan-Oliver Wagner, Radim Blazek r.shaded.relief: CERL Markus Neteler, Michael Barton, Gordon Keith, Andreas Lange, David Finlayson, Glynn Clements, (and me) comments? mine: My feeling is that it is the sole responsibility of the coder to research and clearly spell out the code heritage in the code header comments. Even if it is deemed to be based on public domain CERL code, those authorship and copyright statements shall Never be removed. A port between computer languages is no different than a translation between human languages -- and if you accept that, it follows that you can't retranslate Harry Potter into Klingon and not expect to be sued after your version goes on sale. As a general comment I would not agree to any of my non-trivial GPL code to be relicensed as BSD, as the GPL assures the return on investment for my time. Hamish _______________________________________________ grass-psc mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-psc
