Bug#617613: freecad: links with both GPL-licensed and GPL-incompatible libraries

[Teemu Ikonen]

Hi Francesco,

Thanks for looking into this. As far your option (C) is concerned
(asking Coin3D copyright holders for a linking exception to Open
Cascade), Adam Powell made a request for this two years ago. The
linking exception was not granted. See the mail below.

Best,

Teemu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Adam C Powell IV <hazelsct at debian.org>
Date: Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: New release
To: Teemu Ikonen <tpikonen at gmail.com>
Cc: Werner Mayer <werner.wm.mayer at gmx.de>, Leopold Palomo-Avellaneda
<leo at alaxarxa.net>, Robert Millan <rmh at aybabtu.com>, Denis Barbier
<bouzim at gmail.com>


On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 08:10 -0500, Adam C Powell IV wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-01-14 at 12:39 +0200, Teemu Ikonen wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:40 AM, Werner Mayer <werner.wm.mayer at gmx.de> wrote:
> > The problems with combining Coin, triangle and OCC remain though.
>
> Indeed.  Again, has anyone contacted them about this?  If not, I will.
> I have some hope for an exception for OCC, but not a lot for triangle.

Bad news: SIM will not grant a linking exception for OCC, see attached.

So unless/until OCC changes its license to something GPL-compatible,
Debian won't be able to distribute FreeCAD. :-(

-Adam
--
GPG fingerprint: D54D 1AEE B11C CE9B A02B  C5DD 526F 01E8 564E E4B6

Engineering consulting with open source tools
http://www.opennovation.com/


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Eigil Samset (JIRA)" <coin-support at coin3d.org>
To: hazelsct at debian.org
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:48:30 +0100 (CET)
Subject: [JIRA] Commented: (COINSUPPORT-425) #GPL# GPL linking
exception for Open CASCADE

   [ https://jira.sim.no/browse/COINSUPPORT-425?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=16188#action_16188
]

Eigil Samset commented on COINSUPPORT-425:
------------------------------------------

Hello Adam,

Thank you for contacting us about this. I agree that the Open Cascade
Technology Public License (OCTPL) is clearly incompatible with the
GPL. In our opinion, the issue you are having with regards to
including FreeCAD in the Debian distribution is the Open CASCADE
license, not the Coin3D license.

It's a pity that the OpenCascade developers opted to release their
software under a home-grown, non-GPL compatible license, but that was
their decision.

I am afraid that we will have to decline your request as we do not
make such exceptions. The most appropriate solution to this would be
to discuss with Open CASCADE to change to a GPL license.

I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.

Best Regards,

Eigil Samset
CTO


> #GPL# GPL linking exception for Open CASCADE
> --------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: COINSUPPORT-425
>                 URL: https://jira.sim.no/browse/COINSUPPORT-425
>             Project: Coin Support
>          Issue Type: Bug
>      Security Level: Private(only inhouse people can see these issues)
>            Reporter: Adam C Powell IV
>            Assignee: Eigil Samset
>         Attachments: signature.asc
>
>
> Greetings,
> I'm a Debian developer working on open source engineering-related
> packages, such as FEA, CAD, etc.  We would like to include FreeCAD in
> the Debian distribution, and there's one copyright issue we need to
> resolve with your help.
> Open CASCADE is open source licensed under the Open Cascade Technology
> Public License (OCTPL).  You can read that license at the site
> www.opencascade.org.  Though Debian appears to be heading toward
> approving it as a free software license, it is clearly incompatible with
> the GNU GPL. Therefore, linking FreeCAD with Coin and Open CASCADE would
> create a derived work violating the terms of Coin's license.
> (The Qt library also has this problem, but Nokia will soon release
> version 4.5 with the LGPL license option.)
> To resolve this problem, can SIM please consider granting a "linking
> exception" to allow Coin to interoperate with works distributed under
> the OCTPL, or with Open CASCADE?  The Free Software Foundation publishes
> an example of such a license exception with the GPL, and Qt 4.4 has
> similar exceptions so their license can serve as an example of how to do
> this.
> Thank you,
> -Adam
> --
> GPG fingerprint: D54D 1AEE B11C CE9B A02B  C5DD 526F 01E8 564E E4B6
> Engineering consulting with open source tools
> http://www.opennovation.com/

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