Greetings GRASS Community,
In reference to the copyright, I am not posting this to
start a debate. I am going to clarify where we are
in developing a reasonable copyright statement that
is best for everyone. We are currently dealing with
*several* legal fronts on the copyright issue. It is
very complicated because there are many issues to
address (international and domestic).
The reason it takes time is because we ARE dealing
with numerous legal experts in an effort to develop the
best statement possible. When we took over GRASS
from USA-CERL, there are implications that involve
more than just the user community at large.
We realize that everyone has their opinion about what
the best way to do things is. However, we must hear
from the lawyers on all sides of the issue. I would like
to see this wrapped up over the next week or so and
we are working toward this as a goal. Again, it's great
to have everyone's input and support!
Bruce
--
Bruce Byars
Senior Research Scientist
Center for Applied Geographic and Spatial Research
Baylor University
Hello GRASS users and developers,
Although my knowledge of the legal issues involved in making
GRASS available under the GPL licence is limited, I think it
an option that could be considered seriously. GPL licensing
of GRASS would attract more developers to be involved in
enhancing GRASS further. I also look forward to a time when
GRASS GIS (Perhaps GPL-GRASS?) would be included with
all major Linux distributions, just as the PostgreSQL or
MySql RDBMS packages are.
I also understand the legitimate concerns of the GRASS development
team and surely their immense contributions have to be duly
acknowledged. GRASS development at the present stage has
branched off to GRASS5.0. The development of GRASS4.2 is
now on a lower priority level as evidenced from the availability
of update packages from GRASS website in Europe and
USA. It may be worthwhile to consider the case of MySQL
where the MySQL_GPL 3.20.32a was made available under GPL and
the more recent MySQL is available under a different
licencing arrangement.
News about GPL release of MYSQL is available at
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/9312.html
Perhaps the GRASS community can consider making the GRASS4.2 available
under GPL and GRASS5.0 under a different licencing arrangement.
As for the GRASS5.0 licence the "MySQL FREE PUBLIC LICENSE'', which
is based on the "Aladdin FREE PUBLIC LICENSE.'' may be one option that
could be considered.
Details of the "MySQL FREE PUBLIC LICENSE'' are available at
http://www.mysql.org/Manual_chapter/manual_Public_license.html#Public_license
Thanks to all
Venkatesh Raghavan
Osaka City University
On Wed, Oct 13, 1999 at 11:20:17AM +0900, Venkatesh Raghavan wrote:
Perhaps the GRASS community can consider making the GRASS4.2 available
under GPL and GRASS5.0 under a different licencing arrangement.
As for the GRASS5.0 licence the "MySQL FREE PUBLIC LICENSE'', which
is based on the "Aladdin FREE PUBLIC LICENSE.'' may be one option that
could be considered.
Both licenses limit the right of the users so that companies
can live of the software. It is not free software.
And in GRASS case there is no company producing GRASS.
Bernhard
--
Research Assistant, Geog Dept UM-Milwaukee, USA. (www.uwm.edu/~bernhard)
Association for a Free Informational Infrastructure (ffii.org)
Intevation GmbH