I am wondering if I can talk you into changing the Pixie license to LGPL, or even better to MPL. The reason I ask is that it will be easier to have Pixie take advantage of other existing technologies, like OpenEXR, if it is under a license that permits inclusion of software with other licenses. MPL additionally gives the original author (you) protection against legal action if someone else adds something illegal to your code... for example, voilating the Unisys patent and adding support to Pixie for LZW compressed TIFFs.
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Actually, I would like to have a less restricted license too. However, some components of Pixie (such as the triangulation code) are under tight licenses that prohibit commercial use of the software. Unless I or somebody writes these components, I can not change the licensing.
Okan
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That is also my understanding of the GPL. Output of a GPL program is not required to be GPL and is not subject to licencing requirements - otherwise no program compiled with GCC could ever be anything but GPL (and this is simply not the case).
Whilst a less strict licence (such as those mentioned in previous posts) might be preferable, the logic of the existing licence is to allow free distribution and modification of the code provided that it remains GPL.
Because there are parts of the code that require GPL, Pixie as a whole must be licenced under the GPL rather than something more liberal.
Now if the main concern is commercial use of Pixie, my understanding is that this is allowed under the GPL. So this should not be an issue.
If the issue is one of a commercial product based upon Pixie, then this is still allowed under the GPL (You can charge for the physical act of distributing a copy), but the modified code must still be available under the GPL. This is only fair given the amount of work that Okan has put into Pixie.
In a related issue, Pixar owns the copyright to the Renderman interface. Distributing a Renderman implementation is considerably more complicated if the product is to be commercial.
So.... I believe (and I'm not a lawyer so caveat emptor) that there is no problem in using Pixie commercially.
I'm guessing (and Okan would have to comment to be sure) that any work to allow Pixie to be distributed under another licencing agreement would be secondary to moving it forward as an excellent implementation of a Renderman compliant renderer.
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I agree with your comments. However, my comment was made regarding this comment by Okan in the earlier post in this thread:
"[...] some components of Pixie (such as the triangulation code) are under tight licenses that prohibit commercial use of the software."
I infer from this, that the triangulation code refered to, isn't under the GPL, as the GPL allows commercial use.. or perhaps I misunderstod something... (which would not be the first time.... ;)
Regards
-- Mads
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Okan, let us know what areas of code need to be changed and I'll look into it. I too would prefer a more liberal license. Not because I actually need the code for anything, but I simply dislike an "open source" license that REQUIRES me to open source anything I use it with.
MPL or BSD are my preferred ones.
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First and foremost, I think the discussion is a little confused as to what's at point here. Okan made no mention of the code in question being GPL. He simply said that it couldn't be used for commercial uses.
As such, I think we should use a scenario such as using Pixie as the renderer of a larger (possibly commercial) software package. Both the GPL & any "non-commercial" license preclude this possibility. I, for one, wouldn't want GPL to apply to software I am trying to sell. I might use LGPL libraries but I would prefer MPL or BSD style ones. Let's not debate the pros & cons of GPL & "Red Hat" style business practices - let's look at what most development houses still do, which is sell proprietary software.
Okan mentioned that he'd like to apply a less restrictive license than GPL and I would like to support him in this endeavour. Arguing about the GPL & it's commercial use is fruitless as Okan mentioned that commercial use of the "software" is barred due to another license in question (that of the triangulation code). Commercial use of it's output is (obviously) free from this restriction (otherwise M$ could claim rights to novels written in Word).
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Hi folks - the code is GPL. That's the licence agreement that comes with it. Okan, can you confirm the situation with GPL and commercial use of the software?
When I read Okan's reply
"[...] some components of Pixie (such as the triangulation code) are under tight
licenses that prohibit commercial use of the software."
I assumed it meant selling Pixie as opposed to using the software commercially / in a commercial project.
My reading of the licence agreement was commercial use is allowed, but commercial distribution of Pixie/source is disallowed (except for charging for physical shipment ie. boxed copies).
I'm trying to understand here what people's major concern is. Currently, I see no reason why commercial use should be an issue.
I can see that if you're developing a packge which uses Pixie as a back end, there may be an issue. I guess that it is still possible to ship the package without Pixie (ie Pixie used as a plugin / dylib / so) and give instructions for it to be downloaded separately.
I agree, I've no desire to get into discussion on the relative merits of a licencing scheme. Just trying to clear up the specifics of the actual (GPL) licencing scheme that Pixie is under, and exactly what people's request are...
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My bad... actually only the LGPL (not GPL) allows a program to be linked to a non-(L)GPLed program, which may be free software or proprietary, which is what you're getting at, right?
Then again, this ensures that the intention of an author to make code freely available cannot be circumvented (ie you can't make money out of someone else's work where they wished the product to be freely available). Ie. it is copyleft. My understanding is that it can be hard (quite asside from technical/rewrite issues) to change the licence of published software. All relevant copyright holders must give permission. I don't know how much of an issue for Pixie this would be, but I am aware that it is non-trivial.
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LGPL would still allow the program to be "freely" available. If you distribute the library, you HAVE to make the source available under the same conditions as GPL. The only "real" difference between licensing schemes is that one doesn't have to make the application that USES the library GPL - which is why I would prefer it. I'd of course much prefer a "freer license", but LGPL is much better in my opinion than GPL.
As mentioned, I would help out to make the triangulation code agreeable to such a license
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In fact, this has implications for producing a Pixie compatible LiquidMaya (LGPL would be OK, as you wouldn't have to ship Pixie with the LiquidMaya distro).....
George
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Some components of Pixie were under different licensing terms such as the triangulation code. I have re-implemented all of these components (about a year ago) myself except libtiff and fltk (optional). So Pixie is now under LGPL (libri,libsdr) /GPL (rndr). Notice that libtiff has a very liberal licensing terms so even re-distributing it is not a problem (which Pixie is not doing).
In terms of commercial application: As long as people do not make money directly off Pixie and give appropriate credit, I have no problem it being used as a part of a commercial software. I am not absolutely sure about the LGPL/GPL terms however if people have better suggestions that would increase the exposure of Pixie, please let me know.
There is one very important issue though. Pixie implements several patented algorithms. This means if companies that hold these patents get annoyed by wide-spread commercial use of Pixie, the Pixie developers can be legally molested and this project can be forced to discontinue. Therefore the open source license must provide some kind of protection for the authors. I did not research different licenses and their terms and I'm not familiar with the legal terms. Any help is appreciated.
PS: I'm in a very busy period so I may not be able to respond very quickly. However, after Siggraph (next week) things will return back to normal.
PS (2): I will keep my promise of releasing 1.3.17 with bug fixes towards the end of this week.
Okan
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That's excellent. The differentiation between libsdr/ri and rndr seems like a good idea - it keeps Pixie free, but does allow non GPL programs to link against it.
One thing I did notice, though, is that the licence installed with Pixie and the one in the source distribution is the GPL. There's no explicit mention of the LGPL, which is probably worth fixing (I think there's a GPL licence document which includes the LGPL and states it applies to the libs).
In terms of Patented algorithms (no expert, but I have sought legal advice on this in the past), non-commercial (research etc.) usage of a patented algorithm _is_ permissable. It is _not_ permissable to proffit from software which contains patented algorithms without obtaining a licence. It's also _not_ permissable to cause 'insightment to infringe' - ie to provide software which you encourage commercial use of but whose commercial use / distribution is illegal.
Because Pixie is LGPL/GPL, it does not encourage / allow commercial distribution and therefore, I'd hope, is not subject to patent restrictions. Obviously, like Okan says, legal protection is an important aspect of the licence. Being correct doesn't mean you've got the money to fight it through ;) The precise situation as far as a third party taking the code and using it commercially (but not distributing it) isn't clear to me.
Does anyone know if FSF or others provide a service for advising on this kind of stuff?
Okan - good luck for Siggraph.
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"Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License [...] [...] has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. [...]"
This would not count if the library could reasonably be determined to be present 'by default' in an OS distribution...
I'm unsure about whether as Mads said the GPL is incompatible with software that contains portions which cannot be sold commercially.
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Anonymous
-
2004-09-28
I would like to offer my $0.02 on this issue. Of course I am not a lawyer so caveat emptor. First, on the issue of GPL:
GPL does not restrict you from using the product/code/program/api in question within a commercial setting. This is not the intent of the license. GPL simply attempts to stop people from taking someone else's work and claiming it is theirs and making a million dollars from it.
Think about it: Linux is GPL and is sold commercially by several companies. If Pixie is GPL then the restriction placed on it is if you take Okan's code you cannot:
- claim it to be yours
- hide the source from others
- add non-GPL code to it without turning the added code to GPL as well.
If you go straight to GNU's site and read the GPL v2 license (found at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html )you will find it in section 2 under the heading "TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION", it says:
"2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:" ...
And then it lists some conditions. Before covering the conditions, realize that you or I or anyone has the legal right (based on the GPL license) to actually take the code that Okan wrote and carry on a different project with it (assuming you're as clever as Okan). No onto the conditions:
"a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change"
That's straight forward. And:
"b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
That means that you can't charge money for the work itself and it belongs to the GPL license. So you could use Pixie in a commercial setting. But, if someone asked you for a copy of Pixie you would by legal agreement have to hand them a copy of the code and the executable. But you can still use it commercially. There's nothing there that says you can't use it commercially.
The next part (c) is pretty straight forward:
"c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)"
Now, onto the part of the license that causes much confusion and debate:
"These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works."
Huh? Identifiable sections? That's pretty fuzzy. It's not very clear is it? That's a pretty subjective statement. Identifiable sections. In Pixie's case what would be identifiable? I would think something like the renderering modules, the RIB parsing are both areas that are identifiable. However the TIFF encoding is not necessarily identifiable. But again, this is fuzzy and with a good lawyer you could argue that TIFF encoding is "identifiable". Therefor one must be cautious.
Next section:
"But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
This is saying that if you include the part that is derived in your work, then your work must be part of GPL as well. Example:
You write a Paint program and you use Okan's TIFF encoding code but you don't want your paint program to be GPL. Solution? Exclude from your distribution the TIFF encoding code (make it a linkable lib) and allow for a separate download. Basically it forces your work to be able to stand on its own from the original work.
One last section to consider in the GPL is this:
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally."
This means that if you wish include part of Okan's work into a free work of your own but you want your work to be under say LGPL for example, then you can ask permission from Okan and if he says yes, he may grant you the opportunity to put some of his work under your work that is under a non-GPL license. But it has to be free.
So, I'm not really sure why everyone's running around saying that they can't use Pixie commercially. You can. You just have to share Pixie with others. If you write a module for Pixie that can stand on its own (i.e. doesn't need to run with Pixie), then you can keep that and not share it with Pixie. If you are an a production company and you wish to use Pixie for an upcoming movie/tv show, you have all rights under the GPL to use Pixie in your commerical production. If however someone asks you for a copy of that really cool rendering program you used, you must provide a copy for them.
If you read the GPL license there's nothing that says you can't use the work commercially.
Now, onto the second issue: Okan's post. I'll offer comments on each of Okan's statements here:
<i>Some components of Pixie were under different licensing terms such as the triangulation code. I have re-implemented all of these components (about a year ago) myself except libtiff and fltk (optional). So Pixie is now under LGPL (libri,libsdr) /GPL (rndr). Notice that libtiff has a very liberal licensing terms so even re-distributing it is not a problem (which Pixie is not doing).</i>
The fact that libtiff is under a more liberal license can still cause problems. Attaching non-GPL code to GPL code forces the non-GPL code to follow the GPL code. You may need to get written permission from the author(s) to link Pixie to libtiff since GPL is more restrictive than libtiff. Either that or make libtiff a separate download.
<i>In terms of commercial application: As long as people do not make money directly off Pixie and give appropriate credit, I have no problem it being used as a part of a commercial software. I am not absolutely sure about the LGPL/GPL terms however if people have better suggestions that would increase the exposure of Pixie, please let me know.</i>
Hmmmm. Ok, so you're saying that Pixie cannot be used commercially? But you've put your code under the GPL which makes no reference to this restriction. You either need to change the license or allow people to use your program commercially. If you're going to restrict commercial use then you will need to be very clear about the "how" part of making money. For example, do you mean "make money from the source code"? Or do you mean "make money from the executable"?
Okan, you're suggesting putting Pixie under LGPL. This license is even less restrictive than GPL so Pixie could then definitely be used commercially and, not only that, but could be allowed to link proprietary code to it and not share the proprietary code - only Pixie.
<i>There is one very important issue though. Pixie implements several patented algorithms. This means if companies that hold these patents get annoyed by wide-spread commercial use of Pixie, the Pixie developers can be legally molested and this project can be forced to discontinue.</i>
Oh boy. This is a real pickle of a situation ... if I read this correctly. If you're saying that you've included patented code into Pixie and you haven't told the companies/patent holders about this then you're in HOT water right now. This is exactly what Compuserve did to Unisys back in the early 90's with the LZW algorithm that they put into the GIF image file format.
Okan, you'd had better take inventory of what you've included into Pixie because in the very least you have patented code within a GPL license. Mixing the two is like trying to mix water and oil. It doesn't work.
In the worst case you may have patent holders sending you nasty legal notices requesting that you take down your project before they go after you. They would also contact Berkeley and tell Berkely's legal dept. to take down your site at their address as well as contacting Sourceforge and instructing them on doing the same.
The patent holders can however make an exception with their patents and may allow you to include their algorithms into your code. But this would have to be done by asking them first and then seeing if they would agree. Companies usually do not allow for this if they have a patent since the patent is usually used to protect an investment. Companies also usually take very negatively to the "use first and ask later" strategy simply because it is presumptuous.
Legally molested alright. And the project shutdown.
<i>I did not research different licenses and their terms and I'm not familiar with the legal terms. Any help is appreciated.</i>
Sorry bud but this is something you should have done before you posted Pixie in the first place. Bad bad move. This is of course assuming that you've used patented code without asking. I assume you're still at Berkeley since the Web page about Pixie is found there. You may wish to check with their legal dept. on this. Explain the situation. They should be able to give you help on this and how to approach this issue.
Bascially the moral of the story here is that before you use software, before you share software, before you submit software, before you develop and integrate software, you really need to know where you legally stand. Not enough of that going on in the world today.
Arron
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Well, the licensing as described by Okan is an improvement, though not exactly where I would like things. However, it is free and I (apparently) don't need to spend the time re-writing triangulation code; so who am I to complain?
It would be nice if a rndr library could be created & linked to without the GPL applying (even perhaps with the provision that Pixie be mentioned & linked to explicitly in the Help, Credits, & About box perhaps). However, as it can be used by "shelling" commands to it - there are workarounds.
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I am wondering if I can talk you into changing the Pixie license to LGPL, or even better to MPL. The reason I ask is that it will be easier to have Pixie take advantage of other existing technologies, like OpenEXR, if it is under a license that permits inclusion of software with other licenses. MPL additionally gives the original author (you) protection against legal action if someone else adds something illegal to your code... for example, voilating the Unisys patent and adding support to Pixie for LZW compressed TIFFs.
Actually, I would like to have a less restricted license too. However, some components of Pixie (such as the triangulation code) are under tight licenses that prohibit commercial use of the software. Unless I or somebody writes these components, I can not change the licensing.
Okan
I was just wondering, how does the GPL prevent commercial use of the renderer or code?
AKAIK the GPL only ensures that the source code must be availble, and does not prevent it from beng sold or used commercially...
That is also my understanding of the GPL. Output of a GPL program is not required to be GPL and is not subject to licencing requirements - otherwise no program compiled with GCC could ever be anything but GPL (and this is simply not the case).
Whilst a less strict licence (such as those mentioned in previous posts) might be preferable, the logic of the existing licence is to allow free distribution and modification of the code provided that it remains GPL.
Because there are parts of the code that require GPL, Pixie as a whole must be licenced under the GPL rather than something more liberal.
Now if the main concern is commercial use of Pixie, my understanding is that this is allowed under the GPL. So this should not be an issue.
If the issue is one of a commercial product based upon Pixie, then this is still allowed under the GPL (You can charge for the physical act of distributing a copy), but the modified code must still be available under the GPL. This is only fair given the amount of work that Okan has put into Pixie.
In a related issue, Pixar owns the copyright to the Renderman interface. Distributing a Renderman implementation is considerably more complicated if the product is to be commercial.
So.... I believe (and I'm not a lawyer so caveat emptor) that there is no problem in using Pixie commercially.
I'm guessing (and Okan would have to comment to be sure) that any work to allow Pixie to be distributed under another licencing agreement would be secondary to moving it forward as an excellent implementation of a Renderman compliant renderer.
I agree with your comments. However, my comment was made regarding this comment by Okan in the earlier post in this thread:
"[...] some components of Pixie (such as the triangulation code) are under tight licenses that prohibit commercial use of the software."
I infer from this, that the triangulation code refered to, isn't under the GPL, as the GPL allows commercial use.. or perhaps I misunderstod something... (which would not be the first time.... ;)
Regards
-- Mads
Okan, let us know what areas of code need to be changed and I'll look into it. I too would prefer a more liberal license. Not because I actually need the code for anything, but I simply dislike an "open source" license that REQUIRES me to open source anything I use it with.
MPL or BSD are my preferred ones.
First and foremost, I think the discussion is a little confused as to what's at point here. Okan made no mention of the code in question being GPL. He simply said that it couldn't be used for commercial uses.
As such, I think we should use a scenario such as using Pixie as the renderer of a larger (possibly commercial) software package. Both the GPL & any "non-commercial" license preclude this possibility. I, for one, wouldn't want GPL to apply to software I am trying to sell. I might use LGPL libraries but I would prefer MPL or BSD style ones. Let's not debate the pros & cons of GPL & "Red Hat" style business practices - let's look at what most development houses still do, which is sell proprietary software.
Okan mentioned that he'd like to apply a less restrictive license than GPL and I would like to support him in this endeavour. Arguing about the GPL & it's commercial use is fruitless as Okan mentioned that commercial use of the "software" is barred due to another license in question (that of the triangulation code). Commercial use of it's output is (obviously) free from this restriction (otherwise M$ could claim rights to novels written in Word).
Hi folks - the code is GPL. That's the licence agreement that comes with it. Okan, can you confirm the situation with GPL and commercial use of the software?
When I read Okan's reply
"[...] some components of Pixie (such as the triangulation code) are under tight
licenses that prohibit commercial use of the software."
I assumed it meant selling Pixie as opposed to using the software commercially / in a commercial project.
My reading of the licence agreement was commercial use is allowed, but commercial distribution of Pixie/source is disallowed (except for charging for physical shipment ie. boxed copies).
I'm trying to understand here what people's major concern is. Currently, I see no reason why commercial use should be an issue.
I can see that if you're developing a packge which uses Pixie as a back end, there may be an issue. I guess that it is still possible to ship the package without Pixie (ie Pixie used as a plugin / dylib / so) and give instructions for it to be downloaded separately.
I agree, I've no desire to get into discussion on the relative merits of a licencing scheme. Just trying to clear up the specifics of the actual (GPL) licencing scheme that Pixie is under, and exactly what people's request are...
My bad... actually only the LGPL (not GPL) allows a program to be linked to a non-(L)GPLed program, which may be free software or proprietary, which is what you're getting at, right?
Then again, this ensures that the intention of an author to make code freely available cannot be circumvented (ie you can't make money out of someone else's work where they wished the product to be freely available). Ie. it is copyleft. My understanding is that it can be hard (quite asside from technical/rewrite issues) to change the licence of published software. All relevant copyright holders must give permission. I don't know how much of an issue for Pixie this would be, but I am aware that it is non-trivial.
LGPL would still allow the program to be "freely" available. If you distribute the library, you HAVE to make the source available under the same conditions as GPL. The only "real" difference between licensing schemes is that one doesn't have to make the application that USES the library GPL - which is why I would prefer it. I'd of course much prefer a "freer license", but LGPL is much better in my opinion than GPL.
As mentioned, I would help out to make the triangulation code agreeable to such a license
I see exactly what you're getting at.
In fact, this has implications for producing a Pixie compatible LiquidMaya (LGPL would be OK, as you wouldn't have to ship Pixie with the LiquidMaya distro).....
George
Sorry about the late response.
Some components of Pixie were under different licensing terms such as the triangulation code. I have re-implemented all of these components (about a year ago) myself except libtiff and fltk (optional). So Pixie is now under LGPL (libri,libsdr) /GPL (rndr). Notice that libtiff has a very liberal licensing terms so even re-distributing it is not a problem (which Pixie is not doing).
In terms of commercial application: As long as people do not make money directly off Pixie and give appropriate credit, I have no problem it being used as a part of a commercial software. I am not absolutely sure about the LGPL/GPL terms however if people have better suggestions that would increase the exposure of Pixie, please let me know.
There is one very important issue though. Pixie implements several patented algorithms. This means if companies that hold these patents get annoyed by wide-spread commercial use of Pixie, the Pixie developers can be legally molested and this project can be forced to discontinue. Therefore the open source license must provide some kind of protection for the authors. I did not research different licenses and their terms and I'm not familiar with the legal terms. Any help is appreciated.
PS: I'm in a very busy period so I may not be able to respond very quickly. However, after Siggraph (next week) things will return back to normal.
PS (2): I will keep my promise of releasing 1.3.17 with bug fixes towards the end of this week.
Okan
That's excellent. The differentiation between libsdr/ri and rndr seems like a good idea - it keeps Pixie free, but does allow non GPL programs to link against it.
One thing I did notice, though, is that the licence installed with Pixie and the one in the source distribution is the GPL. There's no explicit mention of the LGPL, which is probably worth fixing (I think there's a GPL licence document which includes the LGPL and states it applies to the libs).
In terms of Patented algorithms (no expert, but I have sought legal advice on this in the past), non-commercial (research etc.) usage of a patented algorithm _is_ permissable. It is _not_ permissable to proffit from software which contains patented algorithms without obtaining a licence. It's also _not_ permissable to cause 'insightment to infringe' - ie to provide software which you encourage commercial use of but whose commercial use / distribution is illegal.
Because Pixie is LGPL/GPL, it does not encourage / allow commercial distribution and therefore, I'd hope, is not subject to patent restrictions. Obviously, like Okan says, legal protection is an important aspect of the licence. Being correct doesn't mean you've got the money to fight it through ;) The precise situation as far as a third party taking the code and using it commercially (but not distributing it) isn't clear to me.
Does anyone know if FSF or others provide a service for advising on this kind of stuff?
Okan - good luck for Siggraph.
Actually, from what I understand, both commercial use and sale of GPL code is allowed.
An example would be the comercial linux distributions.
I refer to to the following FSF documents
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/selling.html which states:
"Except for one special situation, the GNU General Public License [...] [...] has no requirements about how much you can charge for distributing a copy of free software. [...]"
I would also like to refer to http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#DoesTheGPLAllowMoney
and
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLCommercially
So if Pixie containes code that's not for commercial sale then it can't be GPL'ed, from what I understand from the above links.
Hope this helps
Regards
-- Mads
Thanks for that.
It occurs to me that if two clauses were added all would is good:
One which allows the distribution and linkingof libri and libsdr with Non-GPL code. See
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingOverControlledInterface
Another is needed to cover linkage against libs that are not GPL or are not free (but would require permission from the author of those libs). See
http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs
This would not count if the library could reasonably be determined to be present 'by default' in an OS distribution...
I'm unsure about whether as Mads said the GPL is incompatible with software that contains portions which cannot be sold commercially.
I would like to offer my $0.02 on this issue. Of course I am not a lawyer so caveat emptor. First, on the issue of GPL:
GPL does not restrict you from using the product/code/program/api in question within a commercial setting. This is not the intent of the license. GPL simply attempts to stop people from taking someone else's work and claiming it is theirs and making a million dollars from it.
Think about it: Linux is GPL and is sold commercially by several companies. If Pixie is GPL then the restriction placed on it is if you take Okan's code you cannot:
- claim it to be yours
- hide the source from others
- add non-GPL code to it without turning the added code to GPL as well.
If you go straight to GNU's site and read the GPL v2 license (found at: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html )you will find it in section 2 under the heading "TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION", it says:
"2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:" ...
And then it lists some conditions. Before covering the conditions, realize that you or I or anyone has the legal right (based on the GPL license) to actually take the code that Okan wrote and carry on a different project with it (assuming you're as clever as Okan). No onto the conditions:
"a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change"
That's straight forward. And:
"b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License."
That means that you can't charge money for the work itself and it belongs to the GPL license. So you could use Pixie in a commercial setting. But, if someone asked you for a copy of Pixie you would by legal agreement have to hand them a copy of the code and the executable. But you can still use it commercially. There's nothing there that says you can't use it commercially.
The next part (c) is pretty straight forward:
"c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)"
Now, onto the part of the license that causes much confusion and debate:
"These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works."
Huh? Identifiable sections? That's pretty fuzzy. It's not very clear is it? That's a pretty subjective statement. Identifiable sections. In Pixie's case what would be identifiable? I would think something like the renderering modules, the RIB parsing are both areas that are identifiable. However the TIFF encoding is not necessarily identifiable. But again, this is fuzzy and with a good lawyer you could argue that TIFF encoding is "identifiable". Therefor one must be cautious.
Next section:
"But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it."
This is saying that if you include the part that is derived in your work, then your work must be part of GPL as well. Example:
You write a Paint program and you use Okan's TIFF encoding code but you don't want your paint program to be GPL. Solution? Exclude from your distribution the TIFF encoding code (make it a linkable lib) and allow for a separate download. Basically it forces your work to be able to stand on its own from the original work.
One last section to consider in the GPL is this:
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally."
This means that if you wish include part of Okan's work into a free work of your own but you want your work to be under say LGPL for example, then you can ask permission from Okan and if he says yes, he may grant you the opportunity to put some of his work under your work that is under a non-GPL license. But it has to be free.
So, I'm not really sure why everyone's running around saying that they can't use Pixie commercially. You can. You just have to share Pixie with others. If you write a module for Pixie that can stand on its own (i.e. doesn't need to run with Pixie), then you can keep that and not share it with Pixie. If you are an a production company and you wish to use Pixie for an upcoming movie/tv show, you have all rights under the GPL to use Pixie in your commerical production. If however someone asks you for a copy of that really cool rendering program you used, you must provide a copy for them.
If you read the GPL license there's nothing that says you can't use the work commercially.
Now, onto the second issue: Okan's post. I'll offer comments on each of Okan's statements here:
<i>Some components of Pixie were under different licensing terms such as the triangulation code. I have re-implemented all of these components (about a year ago) myself except libtiff and fltk (optional). So Pixie is now under LGPL (libri,libsdr) /GPL (rndr). Notice that libtiff has a very liberal licensing terms so even re-distributing it is not a problem (which Pixie is not doing).</i>
The fact that libtiff is under a more liberal license can still cause problems. Attaching non-GPL code to GPL code forces the non-GPL code to follow the GPL code. You may need to get written permission from the author(s) to link Pixie to libtiff since GPL is more restrictive than libtiff. Either that or make libtiff a separate download.
<i>In terms of commercial application: As long as people do not make money directly off Pixie and give appropriate credit, I have no problem it being used as a part of a commercial software. I am not absolutely sure about the LGPL/GPL terms however if people have better suggestions that would increase the exposure of Pixie, please let me know.</i>
Hmmmm. Ok, so you're saying that Pixie cannot be used commercially? But you've put your code under the GPL which makes no reference to this restriction. You either need to change the license or allow people to use your program commercially. If you're going to restrict commercial use then you will need to be very clear about the "how" part of making money. For example, do you mean "make money from the source code"? Or do you mean "make money from the executable"?
Okan, you're suggesting putting Pixie under LGPL. This license is even less restrictive than GPL so Pixie could then definitely be used commercially and, not only that, but could be allowed to link proprietary code to it and not share the proprietary code - only Pixie.
<i>There is one very important issue though. Pixie implements several patented algorithms. This means if companies that hold these patents get annoyed by wide-spread commercial use of Pixie, the Pixie developers can be legally molested and this project can be forced to discontinue.</i>
Oh boy. This is a real pickle of a situation ... if I read this correctly. If you're saying that you've included patented code into Pixie and you haven't told the companies/patent holders about this then you're in HOT water right now. This is exactly what Compuserve did to Unisys back in the early 90's with the LZW algorithm that they put into the GIF image file format.
Okan, you'd had better take inventory of what you've included into Pixie because in the very least you have patented code within a GPL license. Mixing the two is like trying to mix water and oil. It doesn't work.
In the worst case you may have patent holders sending you nasty legal notices requesting that you take down your project before they go after you. They would also contact Berkeley and tell Berkely's legal dept. to take down your site at their address as well as contacting Sourceforge and instructing them on doing the same.
The patent holders can however make an exception with their patents and may allow you to include their algorithms into your code. But this would have to be done by asking them first and then seeing if they would agree. Companies usually do not allow for this if they have a patent since the patent is usually used to protect an investment. Companies also usually take very negatively to the "use first and ask later" strategy simply because it is presumptuous.
Legally molested alright. And the project shutdown.
<i>I did not research different licenses and their terms and I'm not familiar with the legal terms. Any help is appreciated.</i>
Sorry bud but this is something you should have done before you posted Pixie in the first place. Bad bad move. This is of course assuming that you've used patented code without asking. I assume you're still at Berkeley since the Web page about Pixie is found there. You may wish to check with their legal dept. on this. Explain the situation. They should be able to give you help on this and how to approach this issue.
Bascially the moral of the story here is that before you use software, before you share software, before you submit software, before you develop and integrate software, you really need to know where you legally stand. Not enough of that going on in the world today.
Arron
Well, the licensing as described by Okan is an improvement, though not exactly where I would like things. However, it is free and I (apparently) don't need to spend the time re-writing triangulation code; so who am I to complain?
It would be nice if a rndr library could be created & linked to without the GPL applying (even perhaps with the provision that Pixie be mentioned & linked to explicitly in the Help, Credits, & About box perhaps). However, as it can be used by "shelling" commands to it - there are workarounds.