PanoTools:
Re: copyright violation?
yuval_levy 2004-Sep-14 02:45:37
Clarifying the formal licensing terms of the panotools is important,
for the benefit of the community, the respect of the original author's
intellectual property, the sustainability of the GUI developers
business.
Rik, it's your right to disagree with my opinion against the LGPL - it
is just my personal opinion.
You have no right to assume licensing terms to the panotools other
than those explicitely set by the original copyright holder. Professor
Dersch has released panotools under GPL. All subsequent authors and
developers must comply.
Professor Dersch's is the only one who has the right to change
licensing terms. He has the right to license the pano12.dll under as
many different licenses and to different individuals as he pleases,
like MySQL AB does with its database MySQL or Namesys does with its
filesystem ReiserFS.
Professor Dersch has the right to license pano12.dll under different
terms to himself, or to whoever he pleases, so there is no obligation
for him to release the source code of PTStitcher and PTOptimizer. He
has the right to issue time-restricted licenses, though you are right
in that the licensing terms can not be made retroactive unless both
parties agree.
It is in the interest of the community to clarify the formal licensing
terms of panotools. It is in the interest of Professor Dersch to get
something in return for his marvellous work, either contributed source
code to the community (as in the GPL) or money (as in commercial
licenses) from the GUI developers who profit from his work. It is in
the GUI developers interest to agree on a non-GPL license, so that
they can continue to make money with their proprietary model.
The LGPL is very much in the interest of the GUI developers but not so
much in the interest of Professor Dersch or of the community. It is a
matter of bargaining. With the GPL, the bargain is for free code. With
a commercial licence, the bargain is for money. With the LGPL, the
bargain is for nothing and developers of derivative work can keep it
all for themselves.
Imagine the panotools under LGPL. A commercial developer could improve
the pano12.dll and not give the improvements back neither to Professor
Dersch nor to the community. He could sell it back to him/us. It is as
if you would give your car to your son and he'd get back renting it to
you when you need it...
Its GPL, its not LGPL. The GUI developers are non-compliant. It is in
the interest of the community to solve this non-compliance in an
amicable way and that way might be LGPL, though in my opinion LGPL is
biased in favor of GUI developers. A more balanced approach would
allow the developers to still thrive on their proprietary model while
giving credit to Professor Dersch in terms of a cut on their revenues.
If Professor Dersch does not want the money, he can stipulate in the
license that the money will go to a legal fund to protect legitimate
photographers from ipix lawsuits...
--- In #removed#, "Rik Littlefield" <#removed#
..> wrote:
> For what little it's worth, I personally agree with almost
everything
> that Valient and Yuv have written here.
>
> I disagree, however, with Yuv's recommendation against LGPL.
>
> I personally feel that LGPL is the only justifiable option at this
> time.
>
> The case for GPL would be strong *if* Professor Dersch himself had
> from the beginning complied with its terms.
>
> But as I understand it, the source codes for Professor Dersch's
> versions of PTStitcher and PTOptimizer were never released. So it
> seems that either Prof.Dersch did not really intend for the full
> power of the GPL to apply to pano12.dll, or perhaps (a fantasy, OK?)
> his PTStitcher and PTOptimizer programs actually relied on some
> pano12.dll look-alike that was in fact not covered by the GPL.
>
> Either situation puts the GUI's in a formally defensible position,
at
> least to the extent that they are able to operate through the
> PTStitcher and PTOptimizer released by Prof.Dersch, which seem
pretty
> clearly *not* GPL'd. It's great that the GUI's also happen to be
> able to take advantage of some new features of modified GPL'd code,
> but that's not intrinsic to their operation.
>
> There is also, at least in the U.S., the concept that you cannot
> knowingly allow infringement of copyright for many years, and then
> suddenly complain about it. The GUI's have been available for quite
> a long time now. How many people have complained, and who are they?
>
> Personally, I am happy to pay my money to license the software that
I
> agreed to license, and I am happy to have contributed hundreds of
> hours of volunteer work to enhance the codes that I understood to be
> GPL'd.
>
> Bottom line, it seems to me that pano12.dll has been effectively
> treated as LGPL for something over 5 years now. I am fully
> supportive of clarifying the formal licensing to protect the
sanctity
> of the GPL and LGPL terms, which I believe have had enormous benefit
> to the computing community. But fair is fair -- there is a big
> difference between formalizing the status quo, and changing the
rules
> on the fly.
>
> --Rik
>
> Disclaimer: I speak for no one else. Sometimes I don't even speak
> correctly for myself.
>
> --- In #removed#, "yuval_levy" <#removed#>
> wrote:
> > Very detailed and very clear.
> >
> > Indeed, the GPL is an "infective" license, whether the headers are
> > linked or whether the core code is being modified, and is intended
> > to be so.
> > ...
> > The last word on this is with Professor Dersch: if he does not
> > release the PT under an alternative licence (which could be the
> > LGPL, though I strongly recommend against it as the community
> > and Professor Dersch would lose from this), then to be legally
> > compliant the developers of PT based tools should publish their
> > source code to comply with the GPL.
> >
> > Yuv
> >
> > --- In #removed#, Valient <#removed#> wrote:
> > > For libraries that I'm happy to see used in commercial or
closed-
> > source
> > > programs, I use the LGPL. And there is a difference.
> > >
> > > regards,
> > > Valient
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