[DebianGIS-dev] licensing issue in libgeotiff

[Francesco Paolo Lovergine]

On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 01:45:57PM +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> 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.
> 

This is relevant. I would move those data into a non-free package a part.
That would involve re-packaging the upstream tarball, of course.

> 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,
> 

-- 
Francesco P. Lovergine