[ptx] Licencing problem between Hugin and Vigra

[Markku Kolkka]

Bruno Postle kirjoitti viestissään (lähetysaika keskiviikko, 28. 
syyskuuta 2005 14:51):
> Looking at the license for the Vigra sources, it seems that it
> is of the 'non-commercial' type - You are not allowed to
> profit from selling the sourcecode (but can do whatever you
> like with binaries).
>
> I can see why this would fail an Open Source test, is that
> right?

Yes, the "no more than reasonable fee" restriction violates first 
clause of the OSD: "The license shall not restrict any party 
from selling or giving away the software as a component of an 
aggregate software distribution containing programs from several 
different sources." 

> The other problem (I think) is that modifications to vigra
> can't be GPL licensed since they are required to be public
> domain.  Can this be resolved by reverting to using Vigra as
> an external library?

You must add a license exception for any GPL-incompatible 
libraries (that aren't part of the compiler or OS platform) in 
the Hugin source code:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLIncompatibleLibs

This doesn't solve the problem that Vigra isn't Free/Open Source 
Software and can't be included in distros with a strict FOSS 
policy:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#FSWithNFLibs

-- 
 Markku Kolkka
 markku.kolkka at iki.fi