PanoTools NG:
Re: Panorama Tools License
Daniel M German 2007-Aug-06 05:20:14
[..]
> Anyway, to solve this problem, and after some discussions
> at the IVRPA-conference in Berkeley, I am planning to change the
> license for the PanoTools library (the files "pano12.lib" and
> "pano12.dll" apparently used by many programs) to the
> GNU-library license, which means that programmers can link
> to it without revealing their own code. They still must
> make the library code (and all changes they made to it) accessible.
> I am going to publish the license text at my website in the
> next weeks,and the change will be in effect from that day
> on (not retroactive).I will not change the PTViewer license.
>
Hi Helmut,
We haven't had any chance to meet
I am Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of
Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. I do research primarily in the
areas of software evolution, software re-engineering, open source
software, and software licensing.
You are most likely aware that panotools have been maintained during
the last years as a sourceforge project (I joined the project in
Dec. 2005). I'll refer to the source forge version of panotools as
SF-pano to avoid confusion.
I am very glad you decided to clarify these issues. During the
discussions of the panotools license (around the beginning of this
year) it became clear that we were divided in two camps: those we
wanted panotools under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL), and
those who wanted to continue using the General Public License
(GPL). For the sake of disclosure I was in the latter group. We came
to the conclusion that you were the only one who could initiate a
change of license.
In 2006 SF-pano was split into two versions: pano12, binary compatible
with many of the programs you wrote (and some commercial software,
such as PTgui), and pano13 which was no longer binary compatible with
them (but with a new set of programs that reproduced the functionality
of PTstitcher).
PTgui acknowledged its use of pano12 as a dynamic library, and the
believe that it did not infringe the GPL by doing so (something that I
personally did not accept). Without you (the main owner of the
copyright) it was impossible to assert the license of SF-pano12, or
SF-pano13.
On the other hand I applaud Max Lyons who had been actively
participating in SF-pano, and whose product (PTassembler) has been
using SF-pano12 as an executable (in accordance to the GPL).
Panotools was being used against the spirit (and perhaps the letter)
of the GPL, and nothing was done against it. IMO, this was creating a
bad precedent. The development of panotools has stalled ever since.
As I mentioned before, I am glad you have clarified this issue.
Helmut, do you plan to continue development of panotools?
I'll be glad to donate to you the copyright of many of the
improvements I have done to panotools. This includes several output
projections, and a new parser of the .ini files.
daniel
> Regards
>
> Helmut Dersch
>
--
--
Daniel M. German
http://turingmachine.org/
http://silvernegative.com/
dmg (at) uvic (dot) ca
replace (at) with @ and (dot) with .
--
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