Dear Colleagues, I've given some thought recently to issues of Copyright, Licensing, and attribution of credits related to our software. I want to share my thinking with you and ask for possible input from others.
As I see it, we should work toward satisfying the following goals: 1. A basic notice of copyright, licensing, and warranty disclaimer should be included in every distribution package and installed along with the program. Its content should be something like the following text that Greg recently put into the file .../branches/wspr/COPYRIGHT in our SVN repository: ######################################################################### Copyright (C) 2001-2014 by Joseph H Taylor, Jr, K1JT This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. ######################################################################### 2. A copy of GPLv3 should be installed along with our programs. See file .../branches/wspr/COPYRIGHT. 3. To comply with GPLv3 we must provide all source code necessary to build the program, or instructions on how to obtain it. (I believe we are already doing this.) 4. We should include suitable acknowledgments to individuals and essential prior work that has made our program possible. Suitable places may be the Acknowledgments section of our User Guides, 'About' windows in our programs, a 'README' file installed along with each program, etc. (I believe we are already doing this, too; but we should be on the lookout for possible omissions or inconsistencies.) 5. In the case of KVASD, which implements the patent-licensed algorithm for the Koetter-Vardy Algebraic Soft-Decision Reed-Solomon Decoder, we must ensure that users who install it have seen and accepted the terms of its End User License Agreement. --------------------------------------------------------------------- I should mention that among my motivations for again looking into these matters was my recent examination of downloadable packages for the program "JT65-HF HB9HQX-EDition", available on SourceForge. There are two packages: a Windows binary installer and a Source code package. This program is licensed under GPLv2. A 'readme' file says "The program is mainly based on W6CQz, Joe Large's JT65-HF". It does not mention WSJT. The HB9HQX 'readme' file includes some highlights of program features, including "Rapid decode result with singledecoder and multidecode." That line caught my eye, so I started looking into whether he (or perhaps someone else) had developed independent code for the JT65 protocol (as specified in my September-October 2005 article in QEX, http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/JT65.pdf). No: it turns out that like W6CQZ in the original JT65-HF, and I guess anyone else who has created a program that decodes JT65, he has simply taken code from our WSJT repository, applied the "multi-decoding" ideas from MAP65, compiled it into a windows dll, and used it pretty much as is, including invocation of the closed-source KVASD decoder. I have no problem with the use of our open-source code in another program. After all, that's a major reason for why it is open source! Surely this can be done in the good ham spirit of sharing information and techniques among enthusiastic hobbyists. However, some necessary issues related to copyright, licensing, and attribution must receive suitable attention. We have been somewhat lax about these things in the past -- and so have some others making use of our code. I have had some brief communication with "Beat", HB9HQX. I believe he is in agreement with most or all of the above, and will do what's necessary to bring his version of JT65-HF into compliance with both our license and his. I am sending him a copy of this message. Your comments and suggestions will be most welcome. -- 73, Joe, K1JT ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ wsjt-devel mailing list wsjt-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/wsjt-devel
