[Debian-med-packaging] [ISC-BOARD] Re: Licensing question about Insight Toolkit ( VXL / toms / ACM and non-commercial license conflict with BSD license).

[Luis Ibanez]

Bill,

That sounds very reasonable.

 I will patch ITK 3.16.


     Luis


----------------------------------------------------
On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 2:01 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Luis,
>
> I guess what we are doing is a "good-effort". Patching the 3.16 is a
> "better-effort". Before 3.14 would be a "best-effort", but I think
> that good or better is "good enough".
>
> This does point out an issue with using 3rd part libraries.
>
> Bill
>
> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>> Bill,
>>
>>                We should...
>>
>> but then... not only from ITK 3.16...
>>
>> We would have to remove it from all previous
>> ITK releases that are still downloadable...
>>
>>
>>  This is going to be so much fun....   :-/
>>
>>
>> We will have to patch every release back
>> to ITK 1.0 and then regenerate the tarballs
>> for each one of those releases.
>>
>>
>> The more I think about it the more I want to
>> gather wood and burn the netlib.org web site...
>>
>>
>>     Luis
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 1:40 PM, Bill Lorensen <bill.lorensen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Should we take it out of 3.16 also?
>>>
>>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 12:32 PM, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>>>> The offending code of the "toms" library has now been
>>>> removed from the version of VXL that is distributed with
>>>> the Insight Toolkit (ITK):
>>>>
>>>> http://www.cdash.org/CDash/viewUpdate.php?buildid=526708
>>>>
>>>> The code in question was not used by ITK itself.
>>>>
>>>> Our Dashboard builds,
>>>> after the removal are still green:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=Insight#Continuous
>>>>
>>>> The upcoming release of ITK 3.18 will represent this change.
>>>>
>>>> We should pursue an effort for creating a "purified" netlib web
>>>> site where only code with clear licensing statements is hosted.
>>>>
>>>> In the meantime, we should certainly ban the use of code taken
>>>> from netlib.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Please do not hesitate to let us know if you find any other
>>>> piece of code whose license is incompatible with ITK's license.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    Many Thanks
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>          Luis
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>>>>> Hi Oliver,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>         Thanks a lot for pointing this out.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> As maintainers of the Insight Toolkit, we were not
>>>>> aware of the licensing status of the "toms" library.
>>>>>
>>>>> We appreciate very much that you have brought
>>>>> this to our attention.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The "toms" library is carried by the VXL library, that
>>>>> in turns, is used by ITK for supporting numerics
>>>>> operations (i.e. linear algebra, solvers, optimizers...).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> As you correctly pointed out, a non-commercial
>>>>> license is incompatible with the BSD license used
>>>>> by ITK.  Therefore we will be removing the toms
>>>>> library from the copy of VXL carried by ITK.
>>>>>
>>>>> We will do this in the following hours / days.
>>>>>
>>>>> Certainly, it will be removed
>>>>> before we cut the release of ITK 3.18.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Please let us know if you are aware of any other
>>>>> piece of code that has licensing conflicts. We will
>>>>> be glad to address those conflicts immediately.
>>>>>
>>>>> -----
>>>>>
>>>>> <rant>
>>>>>
>>>>> It is not the first time that we have issues with
>>>>> code that was taken from www.netlib.org.
>>>>>
>>>>> This web site may have serve a purpose at some
>>>>> time, but it doesn't fit anymore the practices of
>>>>> modern open source communities.
>>>>>
>>>>> The site lead users to think that it is a repository
>>>>> of Free and Open Source code, while in practice
>>>>> it is a disparate collection of software, with few or
>>>>> no information about copyright and licensing.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think that the large open Source community should
>>>>> *ban* this site due to its outdated practices and
>>>>> ambiguous (and finally deceptive) presentation.
>>>>>
>>>>> </rant>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>     Regards,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          Luis
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm contacting the Debian-Med Packaging Team because I would to ask a
>>>>> question about the licence of a routine used in the insighttoolkit.
>>>>> I'm not a user of insighttookit and have no personal interest in that
>>>>> package, but I'm actually trying to package another software named
>>>>> eispice (http://www.thedigitalmachine.net/eispice.html) which uses the
>>>>> same particular routine.
>>>>> So I hope you can help me on that subject.
>>>>>
>>>>> Insighttoolkit incorporates third party libraries taken from the "ACM
>>>>> Collected Algorithms"
>>>>> http://www.netlib.org/toms/
>>>>> My question is about one file in particular:
>>>>> insighttoolkit-3.16.0/Utilities/vxl/v3p/netlib/toms/rpoly.f
>>>>> The copyright notice as shown on http://www.netlib.org/toms/ indicates:
>>>>> "Use of ACM Algorithms is subject to the ACM Software Copyright and
>>>>> License Agreement"
>>>>> which is futher explained on:
>>>>> http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice/
>>>>> From what I understand, this licence grants the right to execute,
>>>>> copy, modify and distribute the code and the binary only for
>>>>> non-commercial use. But for commercial use, you have to get the
>>>>> authorisation from the authors.
>>>>>
>>>>> Considering this situation, I would like to know how you solved this
>>>>> licence issue concerning insighttoolkit, so that I can benefit from
>>>>> your experience.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kind Regards
>>>>>
>>>>> Olivier Robert
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>