Since the GeoServer project is open, being part of the project steering committee is sometimes a fine line. I have quoted a reply sent to an organization considering using GeoServer, who were held up by the GPL license. The reply brings up several alternatives being looked into to address this problem, and raises the question: can we provide a more obvious contact point on our website for those with questions of this nature.
Cheers,
Jody
Hi XXXX:
I am CCing this reply to Chris Holmes from The Open Planning Project, they hold the (c) on the software.
The first is to note that GeoServer is a freestanding J2EE application that can be used as is in your architecture without
any license trouble. Your non GPL project would simply be coded against specifications published by the Open GIS Consortium, you
would have no direct dependence on geoserver and there would not be a problem.
The next point is that 90% of the extentions to GeoServer happen within the context of the LGPL project GeoTools. LGPL is a biz friendly license that will not impact your project.
Finally we have two plans of attack for this problem:
- We are currently setting up a module based system for geoserver which will be included in the GeoServer 1.4.0 release, the module system would be LGPL (so your application code would not be troubled), the geoserver modules would remain GPL but you could fetch them via a maven dependency.
- We are considering relicensing GeoServer, something we have put off until a Project Steering Committee was formed.
Thanks for talking to us about this matter, up until recently Chris did not realize that GPL was preventing people from using GeoServer.
For specific questions like how to "preconfigure" GeoServer I can point you towards an experiment Justin did backing geoserver onto the geotools catalog api.
Jody
Yeah, I was thinking about that myself.
We own the geoserver.org domain, perhaps we could set up a 'contact@anonymised.com' that forwards to someone on the PSC, who can keep others in the loop.
And we can have a page called 'contact', which basically says direct most every question to the user and developer list, and that questions of a more private nature can go to the contact address.
Chris
Jody Garnett wrote:
Since the GeoServer project is open, being part of the project steering committee is sometimes a fine line. I have quoted a reply sent to an organization considering using GeoServer, who were held up by the GPL license. The reply brings up several alternatives being looked into to address this problem, and raises the question: can we provide a more obvious contact point on our website for those with questions of this nature.
Cheers,
Jody
Hi XXXX:
I am CCing this reply to Chris Holmes from The Open Planning Project, they hold the (c) on the software.
The first is to note that GeoServer is a freestanding J2EE application that can be used as is in your architecture without
any license trouble. Your non GPL project would simply be coded against specifications published by the Open GIS Consortium, you
would have no direct dependence on geoserver and there would not be a problem.
The next point is that 90% of the extentions to GeoServer happen within the context of the LGPL project GeoTools. LGPL is a biz friendly license that will not impact your project.
Finally we have two plans of attack for this problem:
- We are currently setting up a module based system for geoserver which will be included in the GeoServer 1.4.0 release, the module system would be LGPL (so your application code would not be troubled), the geoserver modules would remain GPL but you could fetch them via a maven dependency.
- We are considering relicensing GeoServer, something we have put off until a Project Steering Committee was formed.
Thanks for talking to us about this matter, up until recently Chris did not realize that GPL was preventing people from using GeoServer.
For specific questions like how to "preconfigure" GeoServer I can point you towards an experiment Justin did backing geoserver onto the geotools catalog api.
Jody
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