Interesting discussion no nabble. I noticed there the same comment, that patent holders allow others to use their patent for free.
I'd suggest that Hugin take the initiative and contact the patent holders and get an authorization to use the algorithm free of charge. This is the easiest solution. I'm sure they are already aware of Hugin and it's use of their algorithms. Upon a yes or no, this can be included in the documentation. Upon a no, I'd like to suggest Hugin appeal to the open source developer community via Slashdot, or etc. and/or mathematicians to develop a patent free photo matching algorithm. If necessary, put up a bounty. I'd also suggest that any individual or company accepting the challenge be required to publicly state their intentions to prevent reversal of license and patent holders in the future. I do find it odd that the patent and copyright information is not in the current documentation. As good as this group is about finding omissions in other work in the Hugin code I would have assumed this was already there. > Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:06:23 -0800 > Subject: [hugin-ptx] Re: Moral questions > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > > Upon reading a bit further in the same OpenCV thread, I found a > mention of different, possibly less patent-restricted algorithms [5]. > Could be interesting! Further investigation needed... > > [5] http://n2.nabble.com/SURF-protected-by-patent-tp3458734p3463927.html > > -- > Bart > > On 23 dec, 13:59, Bart van Andel <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 23 dec, 04:46, DaveN <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > From the SURF page (interesting that the SURF page says it is > > > copyrighted but there is no mention of a patent) > > > > I checked the files they provide, and those contain a LICENSE file, > > which I'll quote below. Indeed nothing is mentioned about patents > > anywhere. I've checked 2 papers on the subject [0-1]: nothing there > > either, nor is it mentioned on the Wikipedia page [2]. On an OpenCV > > discussion [3] however I found a link to a page that show that indeed > > there is a patent [4] (full text available from that site, upper > > right). > > > > [0]ftp://ftp.vision.ee.ethz.ch/publications/articles/eth_biwi_00517.pdf > > [1]http://www.vision.ee.ethz.ch/~surf/eccv06.pdf > > [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SURF > > [3]http://n2.nabble.com/SURF-protected-by-patent-td3458734.html > > [4]http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=EP&NR=2027558A2&;... > > > > -- > > Bart > > > > ----- > > LICENSE CONDITIONS > > > > Copyright (2006): ETH Zurich, Switzerland > > Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium > > All rights reserved. > > > > For details, see the paper: > > Herbert Bay, Tinne Tuytelaars, Luc Van Gool, > > "SURF: Speeded Up Robust Features" > > Proceedings of the ninth European Conference on Computer Vision, May > > 2006 > > > > Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software and > > its documentation for educational, research, and non-commercial > > purposes, without fee and without a signed licensing agreement, is > > hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice and this > > paragraph appear in all copies modifications, and distributions. > > > > Any commercial use or any redistribution of this software > > requires a license from one of the above mentioned establishments. > > > > For further details, contact Andreas Ess ([email protected]). > > ----- > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. > A list of frequently asked questions is available at: > http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with Microsoft’s powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141664/direct/01/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/hugin-ptx
