[DebianGIS-dev] licensing issue in libgeotiff

[Patrice Dumas]

Hello,

The inclusion of libgeotiff (which is included in debian gdal if 
I'm not wrong) in fedora extras is blocked by a licencing issue that 
may be relevant for debian. 

It seems like some data included in libgeotiff is covered by:
http://www.epsg.org/CurrentDB.html#use

with
    3. The data may not be distributed for profit by any third party;

completed by 
    With regard to (3) above, the data may be included within proprietary 
    applications distributed on a commercial basis when the commerciality 
    is based on application functionality and not on a value ascribed to 
    the freely-distributed EPSG dataset.

The intention of the epsg people is certainly to have their data bundled
with free software, but the comment doesn't seems to fit that goal. Indeed
in case of free software, the commercial basis isn't necessarily based on
the application functionnality, since application is available freely 
somewhere.

What is your opinion on that issue?

The fedora extras inclusion review is here:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=178162#c2
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=178162#c4

I sent also that mail to the other people involved in the fedora review
but since I didn't ask them they are hidden.

Regards,

--
Pat