On Aug 5, 2:49 pm, D M German <[email protected]> wrote: > Thomas> I'm sure the trick is doable, but it clearly needs both good > Thomas> legal preparation and good management of the patent rights. > Thomas> Which in turn need to be sustained by some revenue. So it > Thomas> won't happen unless I can actually find some customers who want > Thomas> to build and sell Panini-based products. If I were 20 years > Thomas> younger I'd probably try to start a company to make TV and > Thomas> movie rendering software (and probably lose my shirt) but as it > Thomas> is, someone else is going to have to do that. If any of you > Thomas> wants to volunteer, or knows how to sell new technology to TV > Thomas> or movie producers (or JVC Corporation, for that matter) I > Thomas> would be happy to hear about it. > > I had informal (ie. non legal) conversation with E. Moglen and Bradley > M. Kuhn (Technology Director of Software Freedom Law Center) with regard > to this issue. The FSF would helps us with any questions regarding this > issue. > > I described to them the main issue and it seems that the simplest > solution for everybody (the patent holders and libpano/hugin) is that > you, Tom, re-license the code from its current license (BSD-3 clauses) > to a GPLv3+.
That was my conclusion also. Next time I revise the Panini-general code in libpano13 I shall put it under GPLv3. For version 1 of my Panini viewer/perspective tool I am using the Apache license, which is GPLv3 compatible but also allows a bit more restrictive licensing for proprietary uses, and GPLv3 for the parts that don't implement anything I want to patent. > > Our code is GPLv2+ hence, it can link with GPLv3+ as in practice it will > become GPLv3 at build time. > > Now, from a more pragmatic issue, the uncertainty of if a patent is > going to exist or not is an important issue. Tom, your intention is to > patent, and therefore we must take the necessary steps to address this > potential problem. > > Tom, do you make a claim on the Equirectangular Pannini? No, and not panini_general either. As implemented in libpano13, those projections are public domain as far as I am concerned. What I intend to patent is a graphical Pannini engine, like the one in Panini, plus various processes that use it for specific practical purposes like reformatting movies to fit different screen widths. I will claim some aspects of my GPU implementation as inventions, but not the projection itself. Regards, Tom > > --dmg > > -- > Daniel M. German > http://turingmachine.org/http://silvernegative.com/ > dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca > replace (at) with @ and (dot) with . -- 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
