PanoTools NG:
Re: PTViewer Licensing Question
Georgia Real Tours 2007-Sep-19 09:29:24
Greetings Fulvio,
On 9/19/07, Fulvio Senore <#removed#> wrote:
>
>
> Carl von Einem ha scritto:
> > Another important change of license conditions came with ptviewer 2.1
> > <http://www.panotools.org/mailarchive/msg/7621#msg7621>
> > "GNU-License applies to all extensions of PTViewer, including the
> > QTVR-extension PTMViewer."
> >
> It seems that the GLP requires that code linking to a GPL software must
> be open-source: to solve this problem there is the LGPL that lets
> proprietary software link to the library.
> So, strictly speaking, Internet Explorer should not be allowed to use
> PTViewer. Maybe PTViewer should have been released under the LGPL.
Take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception>.
Additionally, there is a question of "incorporating" which I believe
is the basis for the code linking to which you refer. Is the applet
actually incorporated into Internet Explorer? I think not. Internet
Explorer doesn't per se use the Java application natively; instead it
loads up the Java Virtual Machine and transfers the applet to the JVM.
But the JVM is mostly just a runtime compiler that compiles the code
on the fly. Therefore, the viewer is an independent program running
on a compiler which in turn is running inside another program,
Internet Explorer. And since IE is part of the the operating system
you can continue this further down the layers. In fact, one could
argue that GPL software must run on GPL-compliant layers all the way
down to the motherboard chipset firmwares and the processor
instruction set. Fat chance on getting *those* GPL'd. ;c)
Internet Explorer and the applet may be "talking" to each other, but
that hardly qualifies it as "incorporating" in my humble opinion.
(remember, it is just that: my own humble little opinion.)
More to your answer, though is the fact that just a few weeks ago the
license was updated. Look at http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/
<http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/>. Prof. Dersch changed the
license of his Panorama Tools library to LGPL v3.0. I can only
presume that your question had its bearings in his decision.
Cheers,
Robert~
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