MapGuide fork of AGG

[Jeff McKenna-2]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:

> thomas bonfort wrote:
>> On 10/24/07, Frank Warmerdam <[hidden email]> wrote:
>>
>>> If one distributes MapServer linked with a GPL AGG I *think* you are
>>> required to provide MapServer under GPL terms.  Because there is no
>>> one contributor who has rights to alter MapServer licensing terms I
>>> believe the distributor would be in violation of the AGG GPL terms.
>  >
>> would that also include distro packages that ship debs,rpms,insert
>> your package here, of agg enabled mapserver if their bundled version
>> of agg is 2.5 ?
>
> Thomas,
>
> Yes.  The Debian GIS team is currently looking at statically linking
> AGG 2.4 into MapServer because the packaged version of AGG on Debian is
> 2.5 (ie. GPL licensed).
>
> Best regards,

and for the record MS4W uses AGG 2.4


--
Jeff McKenna
DM Solutions Group Inc.
http://www.dmsolutions.ca

[Sean Gillies]

A member of the MapServer Enterprise/Cheetah cabal admonishing someone
else for a fork and NDA? Hilarious.

Sean

Paul Spencer wrote:

> Clarification for those of you not following the mapguide internals  
> list, Tom Fukushima announced yesterday that they are not actually  
> forking AGG because Thomas found a way that MapGuide could use AGG  
> without making any modifications (at this point).  They will be  
> sucking in a copy of AGG as they do with all other 3rd party  
> libraries but will not be maintaining local changes as a fork.
>
> However, the general opinion now seems to be that the original  
> maintainer, Maxim Shemanarev, essentially created a fork in the  
> community at the time he relicensed AGG as GPL.  In practical terms,  
> Maxim has been committing to the 2.4 code as recently as 2007/09/05.  
> The 2.5 code was initially committed on 2006/10/09 and has had two  
> commits since it was created which seem to be keeping the two code  
> bases in sync only.  Personally, I think he was forced to create a  
> relicensed version of his code base when he signed with Scaleform and  
> has found a creative way to deal with it.  Unfortunately, he has  
> received a lot of bashing from the community for it because he seems  
> unable to speak about the change (NDA anyone?).
>
> I think that as long as 2.4 meets our needs and there is no  
> development going into 2.5, there is no problem.  The problems will  
> start if 2.5 gets some development (that we need) or we (by which I  
> mean the geo community) have improvements to make and no where to put  
> them.
>
> Cheers
>
> Paul
>
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>

[Paul Spencer-2]

Sean

I think the community as a whole has gotten past the whole cabal  
thing and recognized that the intentions were honest even if the  
implementation was poorly thought through.  Perhaps you should get  
over it, too?

And for the record, I was not technically a member of that group.

Also, please point out exactly where I am *admonishing* Maxim for  
relicensing his code?

Paul

On 25-Oct-07, at 10:42 AM, Sean Gillies wrote:

> A member of the MapServer Enterprise/Cheetah cabal admonishing  
> someone else for a fork and NDA? Hilarious.
>
> Sean
>
> Paul Spencer wrote:
>> Clarification for those of you not following the mapguide  
>> internals  list, Tom Fukushima announced yesterday that they are  
>> not actually  forking AGG because Thomas found a way that MapGuide  
>> could use AGG  without making any modifications (at this point).  
>> They will be  sucking in a copy of AGG as they do with all other  
>> 3rd party  libraries but will not be maintaining local changes as  
>> a fork.
>> However, the general opinion now seems to be that the original  
>> maintainer, Maxim Shemanarev, essentially created a fork in the  
>> community at the time he relicensed AGG as GPL.  In practical  
>> terms,  Maxim has been committing to the 2.4 code as recently as  
>> 2007/09/05.   The 2.5 code was initially committed on 2006/10/09  
>> and has had two  commits since it was created which seem to be  
>> keeping the two code  bases in sync only.  Personally, I think he  
>> was forced to create a  relicensed version of his code base when  
>> he signed with Scaleform and  has found a creative way to deal  
>> with it.  Unfortunately, he has  received a lot of bashing from  
>> the community for it because he seems  unable to speak about the  
>> change (NDA anyone?).
>> I think that as long as 2.4 meets our needs and there is no  
>> development going into 2.5, there is no problem.  The problems  
>> will  start if 2.5 gets some development (that we need) or we (by  
>> which I  mean the geo community) have improvements to make and no  
>> where to put  them.
>> Cheers
>> Paul
>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>> |Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
>> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Chief Technology Officer                                         |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

[Sean Gillies]

Paul, I've made up with everyone who has acknowledged that the community
fork of MapServer (through the Autodesk NDA) was not just poorly
implemented, but also the antithesis of open source and wrong. Sadly,
there are those who can not bring themselves to confront this truth.

Maxim's been busting his butt on AGG. Let's appreciate his work and get
over his licensing choice.

Sean

Paul Spencer wrote:

> Sean
>
> I think the community as a whole has gotten past the whole cabal thing
> and recognized that the intentions were honest even if the
> implementation was poorly thought through.  Perhaps you should get over
> it, too?
>
> And for the record, I was not technically a member of that group.
>
> Also, please point out exactly where I am *admonishing* Maxim for
> relicensing his code?
>
> Paul
>
> On 25-Oct-07, at 10:42 AM, Sean Gillies wrote:
>
>> A member of the MapServer Enterprise/Cheetah cabal admonishing someone
>> else for a fork and NDA? Hilarious.
>>
>> Sean
>>
>> Paul Spencer wrote:
>>> Clarification for those of you not following the mapguide internals  
>>> list, Tom Fukushima announced yesterday that they are not actually  
>>> forking AGG because Thomas found a way that MapGuide could use AGG  
>>> without making any modifications (at this point).  They will be  
>>> sucking in a copy of AGG as they do with all other 3rd party  
>>> libraries but will not be maintaining local changes as a fork.
>>> However, the general opinion now seems to be that the original  
>>> maintainer, Maxim Shemanarev, essentially created a fork in the  
>>> community at the time he relicensed AGG as GPL.  In practical terms,  
>>> Maxim has been committing to the 2.4 code as recently as
>>> 2007/09/05.   The 2.5 code was initially committed on 2006/10/09 and
>>> has had two  commits since it was created which seem to be keeping
>>> the two code  bases in sync only.  Personally, I think he was forced
>>> to create a  relicensed version of his code base when he signed with
>>> Scaleform and  has found a creative way to deal with it.  
>>> Unfortunately, he has  received a lot of bashing from the community
>>> for it because he seems  unable to speak about the change (NDA anyone?).
>>> I think that as long as 2.4 meets our needs and there is no  
>>> development going into 2.5, there is no problem.  The problems will  
>>> start if 2.5 gets some development (that we need) or we (by which I  
>>> mean the geo community) have improvements to make and no where to
>>> put  them.
>>> Cheers
>>> Paul
>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>> |Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
>>> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>
>
>
>
>
>

[Paul Spencer-2]

Sean,

On 25-Oct-07, at 11:15 AM, Sean Gillies wrote:

> Paul, I've made up with everyone who has acknowledged that the  
> community fork of MapServer (through the Autodesk NDA) was not just  
> poorly implemented, but also the antithesis of open source and  
> wrong. Sadly, there are those who can not bring themselves to  
> confront this truth.

thank you for clarifying your position

> Maxim's been busting his butt on AGG. Let's appreciate his work and  
> get over his licensing choice.

This was partly the point I had hoped to make but was obviously not  
eloquent enough to make clearly.

Paul

+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|Chief Technology Officer                                         |
|DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

[Sean Gillies]

I'm sorry, Paul, for reading too much into your assessment of the
license situation. I apologize. I was overzealous in my defense of
Maxim's GPL licensing.

Sean


Paul Spencer wrote:

> Sean
>
> I think the community as a whole has gotten past the whole cabal thing
> and recognized that the intentions were honest even if the
> implementation was poorly thought through.  Perhaps you should get over
> it, too?
>
> And for the record, I was not technically a member of that group.
>
> Also, please point out exactly where I am *admonishing* Maxim for
> relicensing his code?
>
> Paul
>
> On 25-Oct-07, at 10:42 AM, Sean Gillies wrote:
>
>> A member of the MapServer Enterprise/Cheetah cabal admonishing someone
>> else for a fork and NDA? Hilarious.
>>
>> Sean
>>
>> Paul Spencer wrote:
>>> Clarification for those of you not following the mapguide internals  
>>> list, Tom Fukushima announced yesterday that they are not actually  
>>> forking AGG because Thomas found a way that MapGuide could use AGG  
>>> without making any modifications (at this point).  They will be  
>>> sucking in a copy of AGG as they do with all other 3rd party  
>>> libraries but will not be maintaining local changes as a fork.
>>> However, the general opinion now seems to be that the original  
>>> maintainer, Maxim Shemanarev, essentially created a fork in the  
>>> community at the time he relicensed AGG as GPL.  In practical terms,  
>>> Maxim has been committing to the 2.4 code as recently as
>>> 2007/09/05.   The 2.5 code was initially committed on 2006/10/09 and
>>> has had two  commits since it was created which seem to be keeping
>>> the two code  bases in sync only.  Personally, I think he was forced
>>> to create a  relicensed version of his code base when he signed with
>>> Scaleform and  has found a creative way to deal with it.  
>>> Unfortunately, he has  received a lot of bashing from the community
>>> for it because he seems  unable to speak about the change (NDA anyone?).
>>> I think that as long as 2.4 meets our needs and there is no  
>>> development going into 2.5, there is no problem.  The problems will  
>>> start if 2.5 gets some development (that we need) or we (by which I  
>>> mean the geo community) have improvements to make and no where to
>>> put  them.
>>> Cheers
>>> Paul
>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>> |Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>>> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
>>> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
>>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Paul Spencer                          [hidden email]    |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
> |Chief Technology Officer                                         |
> |DM Solutions Group Inc                http://www.dmsolutions.ca/ |
> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>
>
>
>
>
>

[Paul Ramsey-2]

Dave,

PostgreSQL-with-PostGIS is a derived product, and if you distributed  
such a thing in binary form you'd have to also distribute the source  
of both, entirely under the GPL.

Some folks (EnterpriseDB) get around this by distributing them  
separately, and since PostGIS is run-time loadable, this works fine.  
EDB is proprietary, PostGIS is a GPL extension loaded separately and  
(here's the key word) optionally.

Nothing above the database layer falls under the aegis of the GPL.  
MySQL would love if it did, but it doesn't.  MySQL ended up  
relicensing their client libraries as GPL, specifically in order to  
bring more suckers (er, clients) into their commercial re-licensing web.

P.

On 24-Oct-07, at 7:36 AM, Dave McIlhagga wrote:

> I realize this is a bit of a tangent from the original discussion  
> -- but does anyone have an idea of where the line is vis-a-vis  
> PostGIS since it too is GPL? ie. if a proprietary solution built  
> with MapScript is distributed built on MapServer today AND PostGIS  
> -- would that be in violation of the license?

[Dave McIlhagga]

Thanks for the clarification Paul. That's good to know.

Dave



On 25-Oct-07, at 7:38 PM, Paul Ramsey wrote:

> Dave,
>
> PostgreSQL-with-PostGIS is a derived product, and if you  
> distributed such a thing in binary form you'd have to also  
> distribute the source of both, entirely under the GPL.
>
> Some folks (EnterpriseDB) get around this by distributing them  
> separately, and since PostGIS is run-time loadable, this works  
> fine.  EDB is proprietary, PostGIS is a GPL extension loaded  
> separately and (here's the key word) optionally.
>
> Nothing above the database layer falls under the aegis of the GPL.  
> MySQL would love if it did, but it doesn't.  MySQL ended up  
> relicensing their client libraries as GPL, specifically in order to  
> bring more suckers (er, clients) into their commercial re-licensing  
> web.
>
> P.
>
> On 24-Oct-07, at 7:36 AM, Dave McIlhagga wrote:
>
>> I realize this is a bit of a tangent from the original discussion  
>> -- but does anyone have an idea of where the line is vis-a-vis  
>> PostGIS since it too is GPL? ie. if a proprietary solution built  
>> with MapScript is distributed built on MapServer today AND PostGIS  
>> -- would that be in violation of the license?
>

[Dirk Tilger-2]

On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 11:15:10AM -0400, Doyon, Jean-Francois wrote:
> PostgreSQL is released under a BSD license ... So you'd be safe, because
> the binary components that you'd include with MapServer (as in MS4W for
> example) would only inculde PostgreSQL stuff, and nothing PostGIS
> specific.  PostGIS lives on the server only (AFAIK?).

I believe the bigger part of PostGIS lives in client space. At least for
PostGIS 1.1 the big amount of spatial computations was handled in the
client. I'm not an expert here, but looked to me like everything that
goes beyond the pure idea of a database (storing and using indexes to
retrieve) was handled in the client.

Dirk.

[Paul Ramsey-2]

PostGIS runs in the database server.  Client software like Mapserver,  
PgAdmin, uDig, QGIS, contain 0% PostGIS code, they only contain  
generic PgSQL client code (libpq).

P

On 30-Oct-07, at 9:55 AM, Dirk Tilger wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 24, 2007 at 11:15:10AM -0400, Doyon, Jean-Francois wrote:
>> PostgreSQL is released under a BSD license ... So you'd be safe,  
>> because
>> the binary components that you'd include with MapServer (as in  
>> MS4W for
>> example) would only inculde PostgreSQL stuff, and nothing PostGIS
>> specific.  PostGIS lives on the server only (AFAIK?).
>
> I believe the bigger part of PostGIS lives in client space. At  
> least for
> PostGIS 1.1 the big amount of spatial computations was handled in the
> client. I'm not an expert here, but looked to me like everything that
> goes beyond the pure idea of a database (storing and using indexes to
> retrieve) was handled in the client.
>
> Dirk.