[Debian-med-packaging] Licensing question about Insight Toolkit ( VXL / toms / ACM and non-commercial license conflict with BSD license).

[Luis Ibanez]

Olivier,

You bring up a good point,

We probably should ask for advice to the
packagers of these other libraries.

What is the standard channel for contacting
Debian packager maintainers ?


    Thanks


          Luis


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On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Olivier Robert <poutifar at gmx.com> wrote:
>> We should pursue an effort for creating a "purified" netlib web
>> site where only code with clear licensing statements is hosted.
>>
>> In the meantime, we should certainly ban the use of code taken
>> from netlib.
>
> Another thing to consider is that a number of these routines are already shipped as packages in debian.
> Examples :
>
> blas --> libblas3gf
> lapack --> liblapack3gf
>
> I see two interesting things in that :
>
> 1) the forensic of these packages could help to understand how to do the licencing work properly
> 2) it should be feasible to use these shared libraries instead of static code.
> I don't know if it is interesting or not. It's really an open question. (I have the same situation with another package)
> What are the recommandation of the debian policy? What about the performance ?
>
>
> Olivier
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:32:15 -0500
> Luis Ibanez <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>
>> The offending code of the "toms" library has now been
>> removed from the version of VXL that is distributed with
>> the Insight Toolkit (ITK):
>>
>> http://www.cdash.org/CDash/viewUpdate.php?buildid=526708
>>
>> The code in question was not used by ITK itself.
>>
>> Our Dashboard builds,
>> after the removal are still green:
>>
>> http://www.cdash.org/CDash/index.php?project=Insight#Continuous
>>
>> The upcoming release of ITK 3.18 will represent this change.
>>
>> We should pursue an effort for creating a "purified" netlib web
>> site where only code with clear licensing statements is hosted.
>>
>> In the meantime, we should certainly ban the use of code taken
>> from netlib.
>>
>>
>> Please do not hesitate to let us know if you find any other
>> piece of code whose license is incompatible with ITK's license.
>>
>>
>>
>>     Many Thanks
>>
>>
>>           Luis
>>
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 10:24 AM, Luis Ibanez
>> <luis.ibanez at kitware.com> wrote:
>> > Hi Oliver,
>> >
>> >
>> >         Thanks a lot for pointing this out.
>> >
>> >
>> > As maintainers of the Insight Toolkit, we were not
>> > aware of the licensing status of the "toms" library.
>> >
>> > We appreciate very much that you have brought
>> > this to our attention.
>> >
>> >
>> > The "toms" library is carried by the VXL library, that
>> > in turns, is used by ITK for supporting numerics
>> > operations (i.e. linear algebra, solvers, optimizers...).
>> >
>> >
>> > As you correctly pointed out, a non-commercial
>> > license is incompatible with the BSD license used
>> > by ITK.  Therefore we will be removing the toms
>> > library from the copy of VXL carried by ITK.
>> >
>> > We will do this in the following hours / days.
>> >
>> > Certainly, it will be removed
>> > before we cut the release of ITK 3.18.
>> >
>> >
>> > Please let us know if you are aware of any other
>> > piece of code that has licensing conflicts. We will
>> > be glad to address those conflicts immediately.
>> >
>> > -----
>> >
>> > <rant>
>> >
>> > It is not the first time that we have issues with
>> > code that was taken from www.netlib.org.
>> >
>> > This web site may have serve a purpose at some
>> > time, but it doesn't fit anymore the practices of
>> > modern open source communities.
>> >
>> > The site lead users to think that it is a repository
>> > of Free and Open Source code, while in practice
>> > it is a disparate collection of software, with few or
>> > no information about copyright and licensing.
>> >
>> > I think that the large open Source community should
>> > *ban* this site due to its outdated practices and
>> > ambiguous (and finally deceptive) presentation.
>> >
>> > </rant>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     Regards,
>> >
>> >
>> >          Luis
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --------------------------------------------------------------
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I'm contacting the Debian-Med Packaging Team because I would to ask
>> > a question about the licence of a routine used in the
>> > insighttoolkit. I'm not a user of insighttookit and have no
>> > personal interest in that package, but I'm actually trying to
>> > package another software named eispice
>> > (http://www.thedigitalmachine.net/eispice.html) which uses the same
>> > particular routine. So I hope you can help me on that subject.
>> >
>> > Insighttoolkit incorporates third party libraries taken from the
>> > "ACM Collected Algorithms"
>> > http://www.netlib.org/toms/
>> > My question is about one file in particular:
>> > insighttoolkit-3.16.0/Utilities/vxl/v3p/netlib/toms/rpoly.f
>> > The copyright notice as shown on http://www.netlib.org/toms/
>> > indicates: "Use of ACM Algorithms is subject to the ACM Software
>> > Copyright and License Agreement"
>> > which is futher explained on:
>> > http://www.acm.org/publications/policies/softwarecrnotice/
>> > From what I understand, this licence grants the right to execute,
>> > copy, modify and distribute the code and the binary only for
>> > non-commercial use. But for commercial use, you have to get the
>> > authorisation from the authors.
>> >
>> > Considering this situation, I would like to know how you solved this
>> > licence issue concerning insighttoolkit, so that I can benefit from
>> > your experience.
>> >
>> > Kind Regards
>> >
>> > Olivier Robert
>> >
>