[Freegis-list] free ecw?

[Stefano Maffulli]

On Mon, 2005-06-20 at 11:23 -0400, Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> I don't believe that the ERM public use license qualifies under
> the free software definition due to a few limitations.  Notably
> the one disallowing changes to the ECW format, and the apparent
> disallowing of distributing modified versions of the code except
> via patch sets. 

That's really too bad for them, because both issues you mention can be
resolved pretty easily: not changing the format itself can be achieved
with a trademark enforcement and the same trademark can avoid the
distribution of modified ECW software (since I guess that ER is afraid
that somebody distributes a modified sdk that doesn't work well and they
risk losing their credibility).  If this is the case and since they have
already done most of the work to get close to free software and with
just a little step they can be complete citizens of the free software
community. 

The objections you report are the same ones of Mozilla Foundation and
they were solved recently with the Mozilla Trademark Policy v1.0 
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/trademarks/policy.html

> ObDisclosure: I'm partly in ERMappers pay, and so not necessarily
> objective.  

maybe you can let them read the Mozilla trademark policy then :)

regards
stef