[Freegis-list] OGDI Licensing Concerns

[Frank Warmerdam]

Jan-Oliver Wagner wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2001 at 04:46:49PM -0500, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> > The 3i (Information Interoperability Institute) is pleased to
> > announce the first 3i source release for OGDI.  OGDI is the
> > Open Geographic Datastore Interface, an application programming
> > interface (API) providing local and remote access to geospatial
> > data products in a variety of raster and vector formats.
> >
> > The open source OGDI core technology, and the OGDI interface standard
> > is currently maintained by the 3i.
> 
> >   http://ogdi.sourceforge.net/
> 
> I skimmed through the diverse licenses involved in OGDI
> (which are nicely collected in the License file) and
> detected at least one license which is not Free Software
> (though the source is open, which again is a different thing
> to Open Source, alas, this term has produce a lot confusion):
> 
> include/win32/heapagnt.h (and others):
> /* heapagnt.h -- HeapAgent (tm) public C/C++ header file
>  *
>  * Copyright (C) 1991-1996 by Arthur D. Applegate.  All Rights Reserved.
>  * All Rights Reserved.
>  *
>  * No part of this source code may be copied, modified or reproduced
>  * in any form without retaining the above copyright notice.
>  * This source code, or source code derived from it, may not be redistributed
>  * without express written permission of the author.
> 
> Thus we will not add OGDI to FreeGIS, because redistributing
> the code in some cases can be an illegal act.
> 
> OGDI is a _very_ interesting tool and it is __almost__ Free Software.
> To my mind it is worth the efford to resolve the remaining (hopefully
> only few) license issues.
> 
> BTW, does SourceForge allow to place non-free Software outside their
> nonfree section? Just a thought that comes to my mind.
> 
> Frank, can you perhaps estimate the work that needs to be done for
> resolving the license issues? I can offer assitance in writing to
> authors.
> 
> However, the free GIS programmers of you have still the opportunity
> to pick code from OGDI which is covered by Free Software licenses.
> It looks like the most helpful code elements are all Free Software.
> 
> An option to add OGDI to FreeGIS would be to publish a package
> without the non-free elements (yes, of course that package would not
> be compilable).

Jan, 

I have reviewed the OGDI code, and was successful in removed a number of
files in the include/win32 directory.  While they may have once been used
for some purpose, I find they aren't actually used anymore, even on Windows.
I have updated the LICENSE file to reflect two licenses that are no longer
issues (including the heapagent one), and issued an OGDI 3.1alpha3 release
without the license problems.

I have skimmed the other licenses, and I don't think there are any other
real problems.  If there is please let me know and I will do what I can to
clean them up.  It is the 3i's intention for OGDI to meet the OSD. 

Best regards,

---------------------------------------+--------------------------------------
I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerda
and watch the world go round - Rush    | Geospatial Programmer for Rent