I echo the annoyance at expending a lot of effort to help proprietary
license holders corral users in certain directions. It's certainly
against the spirit of OSGeo4W.
On the other hand as a user I have to consume proprietary formats as
part of my job and the recent ECW license changes to merely read their
format have been a major source of irritation and extra effort expense.
I would welcome a click-through-license install process for this and
similar applications/libraries.
Honestly, if everything is installed as part of OSGeo4W it does not
seem like a gray area to me. It seems to be a clear violation of the
GPL.
If the end user later adds a proprietary plugin of their own accord
then we are at least in a gray area or even in the clear. But it
isn't my wish to try and subvert the GPL.
I think it's important to communicate the difference between the "real"
osgeo4w applications and those that are included for convenience and
interoperability. If the click-licenses pop up as part of the regular
install process this distinction will be blurry, if present at all, to
many users. So perhaps a two stage install process, or two install
programs (actually the same exe with a different setup.ini)?
I think this method defensibly demonstrates our intent to honour the
GPL. There are likely other methods, but I lack the imagination at
present to conjure them up. :)
matt wilkie
--------------------------------------------
Geomatics Analyst
Information Management and Technology
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/
--------------------------------------------
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