Hi,
Thank you for sharing this information. For me it looks like OpenJUMP does not
fulfill the requirements of "ECW JPEG 2000 SDK
PUBLIC USE LICENSE AGREEMENT". Our choice would then be the "ECW JPEG 2000 SDK
FREE USE LICENSE AGREEMENT" with compression size limitation "The intent of
this license is to allow unlimited decompression and limited compression (500MB
per image) of
ECW JPEG 2000 images within free or commercial applications." Unfortunately
this alternative was not analyzed further.
-Jukka Rahkonen-
Stephan Holl wrote:
> Hello ede, all,
>
> I tried to read the licence again and again and decided to
> ask Bernhard
> Reiter (BER), a collegue of mine and Free Software licence
> expert about a
> statement to the ECW-license-text posted by ede.
>
> He is not subscribed to this list, so I post his writing here on his
> behave:
>
> BER> Analysis of "ecw license.txt",
> BER> "EARTH RESOURCE MAPPING
> BER> ECW JPEG 2000 SDK LICENSE AGREEMENTS"
> BER>
> BER> The first paragraph mentions four licensing options. One is for
> BER> applications licensed "under a GNU General Public style license
> BER> ("GPL")". The second has limitations and the third one is for
> BER> "commercial applications". Given the explicit mention of GNU GPL
> BER> style licenses, it can be assumed that "commercial applications"
> BER> more precisely means "proprietary applications".
> BER> The fourth option is to ask for a license for the use in
> BER> applications "that are outside of the terms of these agreements,
> BER> including server-side applications". So it is not entirely clear
> BER> that server-side applications are meant to be included in the
> BER> first three licensing options.
> BER>
> BER> Aiming at a Free Software application our best candidate seems to
> BER> be the first option, which is called the "ECW JPEG 2000 SDK
> BER> PUBLIC USE LICENSE AGREEMENT". Let us examine it in more detail:
> BER>
> BER> The first section states the intent of the license "to establish
> BER> freedom to share and change the software regulated by this
> BER> license under the open source model".
> BER> This is a good sign.
> BER>
> BER> However the use of the software is further restricted to "to
> BER> develop or be distributed with products that are licensed under a
> BER> license similar to a General Public License ("GPL") and at no
> BER> charge to the public." As it is possible to place software under
> BER> the GNU GPL v2 or v3 for which access to is limited or charged
> BER> for, use of this software would already be an additional
> BER> restriction towards the GNU GPL v2+ license. And thus be
> BER> forbidden by the GNU GPL licenses itself. As GNU GPL style
> BER> licences are allowed only, maybe a license GNU GPL with a special
> BER> exception for the libary might use the library so far. Let us
> BER> look further.
> BER>
> BER> The license of the library itself seems to be unfree, because of
> BER> the no-charge restriction, the assumed server-only restriction
> BER> and the restriction to not change the format. There used to be a
> BER> clear non-server restriction in 1)b)iv) in an elder version of
> BER> the license:
> BER> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/02/msg00051.html which
> BER> got removed in the current one under examination.
> BER>
> BER> The no-charge restriction will also result in major
> BER> GNU-Distribution being unable to ship the ecw libaries, e.g.
> BER> Debian has discussed a few times and also always concluded that
> BER> the license is non-free. E.g.
> BER> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/02/msg00061.html has
> BER> three unfree reasons.
> BER>
> BER> And then there are patents: The
> BER> http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html states in 3. 7) that the
> BER> patents must allow a royality free use for everybody that
> BER> receives the source code under this license. A modifed source
> BER> code that changes the ecw format would be available under the
> BER> license, but probably not allowed by the patent grand of the ecw
> BER> lib. Therefore a "GPL v2+exception" license would not work, you
> BER> could not distribute the software. Section 3. 6) forbits adding
> BER> of further restrictions, so the combined GNU GPL v2 + exc lib is
> BER> undistributable. The situation is similiar with the GNU GPLv3.
> BER>
> BER> As it is unclear what under a 'GNU General Public style license
> BER> ("GPL")' means, there might be licenses that might allow the
> BER> derived work of ecw libraries and itself to be developed and
> BER> distributed. The obvious choices GNU GPLv2 and v3 do not allow
> BER> it, though.
> BER>
> BER> On the freegis lists, there have been discussion about this a few
> BER> times, e.g.
> BER>
> http://freegis.org/pipermail/freegis-list/2006-September/thread.html
> BER> clearly showing that the license is problematic.
>
> Best
>
> Stephan
>
>
> edgar.sol...@web.de, [20111007 - 11:21:10]
>
> > First and foremost, there is _no_ license issue here. We have two
> > licenses, to which terms we have to agree and act.
> >
> > ECW SDK license (note: version 3.3):
> > For everyone unsure i attached the license of the ecw code used to
> > this email. Our use case is the first license in there: -->
> > Use of the ECW JPEG 2000 SDK with Unlimited Decompressing and
> > Unlimited Compression for applications licensed under a GNU General
> > Public style license ("GPL") is governed by the "ECW JPEG 2000 SDK
> > PUBLIC USE LICENSE AGREEMENT". <-- The only drawback would be some
> > commercial restriction "selling,renting not allowed", but this
> > shouldn't be our concern, because we do _nothing_ of that sort and
> > anyone who wants to should make sure to oblige _all_ licenses.
> >
> > GPL2:
> > Secondly there is the GPLv2, the oj license. Everybody can
> get a copy
> > themselves. in a nutshell it protects every code based on
> gpl code by
> > extending gpl to it. This actually does not prevent you to use
> > libraries or other software with it. It "merely" insists on proper
> > interfaces, which make sure that these are independent software
> > parts. This can be problematic, because a lot of interfacing in some
> > programming languages is done by definitions, which are done in
> > source code themselves. So actually if a library would include this
> > code, it would need to be gpl'd again. But this is not the
> case here.
> > There is a clean separation of the source code and oj is
> merely using
> > ecw routines, not the other way around. This is covered by the
> > "plugin" definition.
> > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLAndPlugins
> >
> > in conclusion, no problem here.
> >
> > ..ede
>
>
>
> --
> Stephan Holl <stephan.h...@intevation.de> | Tel.: +49
> (0)541-33 508 3663
> Intevation GmbH, Neuer Graben 17, 49074 OS | AG Osnabrück -
> HR B 18998
> Geschäftsführer: Frank Koormann, Bernhard Reiter, Dr.
> Jan-Oliver Wagner
>
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