On 2014-09-19 20:32+0100 Andrew Ross wrote: > On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 07:03:05PM -0700, Alan Irwin wrote: >> @Andrew: >> The next paragraph is all my opinion, but I don't feel strongly about >> it. Therefore, if you decide to deal with this license another way, >> that is fine with me. >> >> The function of the Copyright file is ideally to collect all >> information for all licenses in one place. However, this license for >> the Exmoor shapefile data is a fairly long license in PDF format >> rather than text so it should probably suffice to state in the >> Copyright file that the files in data/ss are subject to the licensing >> terms at >> http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/opendata/docs/os-opendata-licence.pdf. >> This is almost exactly redundant with what Phil states in >> data/ss/os_open_conditions.txt, but such redundancy is fine, and that >> file explaining the licensing should remain with the data. > > I agree - unless it proves to be controversial. You never can tell, > particularly > when it comes to free / non-free licensing and Debian.
@Andrew: Of course, as a Debian packager you are in a much more exposed position than upstream PLplot to guys who think of themselves as Debian licensing policeman so you may well decide to keep your life simple by having nothing to do with these Exmoor data at all by removing them (once our next release happens) from the source tree package that Debian distributes. In which case, we would need to make upstream changes as well which would be an example 19 change to quietly skip the Exmoor page if Exmoor data cannot be found, and a build-system change such that instead of erroring out if Exmoor data cannot be found, it simply quietly skips the install of those data if they are missing. @Phil: I think you are right that these Exmoor data are probably as free as it is going to get for map data distributed in shapefile format officially by government entities. And certainly these Exmoor data are a wonderful way to make sure our map API works properly for all the kinds of data that are possible with shapefiles. @Everybody: But that does leave the possibility of generating shapefile data ourselves to be used in example 19 in addition to the Exmoor data. I have thought of at least 3 distinct possibilities for satisfying this need and there are likely others: (1) One of us personally generate shapefile data they would be willing to donate to PLplot under the LGPL for use in example 19. (2) Implement an additional PLplot device driver that generates plot files in the shapefile form. (I would encourage some volunteer to implement this idea regardless of our example 19 needs since shapefiles are an obviously well-accepted format for graphical data.) (3) Use another potential source of open-source maps which is Battle of Wesnoth scenario maps. There are literally hundreds of such maps that are publicly distributed. That software is distributed under the GPL2+ license (see http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Wesnoth:Copyrights). They specifically mention code and content so that has to include the map data. Also, any Wesnoth map can be modified with their map editor to create a new map. Of course, Wesnoth is a 2D game with 2D maps, but I still feel one of those fantasy maps could be the basis of a pleasing example 19 page that exercised all aspects of our map API. Therefore, so far so good, but there is a big caveat which is the Wesnoth map data currently only reads and writes map data in a specialized (but well documented) Wesnoth map format. So what is needed here to bring off this idea is a large extension of that map editor which would allow it to output results in shapefile form as well. So this is a completely independent project (i.e., this is an example of the general personal donation scenario given by (1) above) that is definitely not for the timid, but it is something to keep in mind for a fun project if someone here wants to add a completely different and quite artistic kind of 2D fantasy map result to example 19. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Slashdot TV. Video for Nerds. Stuff that Matters. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=160591471&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
