Re: [Geotools-devel] GeoTIFF job code

[Bryce L N. <bno...@fs...>]

Jim,

My legal expertise is somewhat limited, but I did find this:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/uscode/index.html

Type 17USC105 in the search box.  The actual law is rather short, but the
interpretation provided is pretty lengthy.  In my own simplistic terms I
think it means that as long as I'm spending taxpayers' money on the
project, it would take an act of congress (and hence a very good reason) to
make an exception to the rule.  In any case, the decision is made by people
in an entirely separate branch of government. :)

On the other hand, if the module works with Geotools, some version of it
will presumably be maintained in the same respository as Geotools.  You'd
control your copy by only permitting certain people to change your copy. ;)
Who cares if there's another version of unknown/questionable lineage? :)

To Andrea's questions: I'm speaking of the GeoTIFF revision 1.0
specification (Specification  Revision 1.8.2  Last modified 10 November
1995) where the parameters are specified by tags.  I'm not planning on
implementing all the bells and whistles.  In particular, no fancy-pants
rubber sheeting or non-affine translations between raster space and model
space.  (I hope I'm using the terminology correctly.)  I haven't thought
much about how to manipulate tag data yet.  Been looking primarily at
Geotools code structure to figure out how this might fit in.

Bryce


                                                                           
             James Macgill                                                 
             <jma...@ps...                                             
             >                                                          To 
             Sent by:                  Bryce L Nordgren                    
             geotools-devel-ad         <bno...@fs...>,              
             mi...@li...urcef         geo...@li... 
             orge.net                  t                                   
                                                                        cc 
                                                                           
             07/13/2004 01:41                                      Subject 
             PM                        Re: [Geotools-devel] GeoTIFF job    
                                       code                                
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
                                                                           




At 12:42 PM 7/13/2004 -0600, Bryce L Nordgren wrote:
>One caveat: I'm a US Gov't civil servant, meaning the GeoTIFF module I
>write is going to be public domain, not copyleft-able.   Is that
>problematic?

Couple of answers to that...  First we have other US Gov't employees who
work on GeoTools under the LGPL licence (IanS?) though I guess their
contributions may be under 'spare time'.  But it may be that contributing
to an existing project would allow you to do the work.

The other answer is that the modular structure of GeoTools was designed to
allow plugins with different licences to be created.  I'm not sure if the
code could co-exist in the same tree though, I'd have to do some more
research.

I've just been doing some research into 'public domain' and the following
document is interesting:
http://www.fin.ucar.edu/legal/publicdomain.html

The final section is of particular interest so I will paste it here:
"
How can I control my work if I put it in the public domain?

You cannot control your work once it is in the public domain.  Your work
can be changed, exploited and someone else can even take credit for it. "

In other words, once you make the code 'public domain' their is nothing to
stop the GeoTools PMC group from taking it and re-releasing it under
another, more restrictive, license.  Not something I would ever normally
condone, but if it was done with your informal consent it could work.

All the best

James



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