Re: [vorlon@netexpress.net: Re: Bug#181969: [mdadams@ece.uvic.ca: Re: JasPer licensing wrt Debian Linux]]
Dear Ben and Others:
On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Ben Reser wrote:
> Perhaps, there is a compromise that we can make between your license and
> our standards.
> For instance Clause 7 of the GPL specifically covers patents and
> generally covers any case where the distribution of the software may be
> illegal or prohibited by some other agreement the distributor is bound
> to.
I am not sure if you are suggesting that JasPer use the GPL. For what
it's worth, the GPL license was considered as a potential license for
JasPer. The problem with the GPL is that many commercial organizations
will not use GPL'd software. For this reason, the GPL was not chosen
for JasPer.
> As I understand it (though I've been utterly unable to verify this for
> sure) the various patent holders have agreed to grant a royalty-free
> license to anyone implementing the JPEG2000 standard. I've seen various
> mentions to this effect on the web and your license certainly seems to
> imply this.
Speaking as someone who has attended a number of the JPEG Working Group
meetings including the most recent one held last month, I can say that
it has always been the intention of the Working Group that the JPEG-2000
Part-1 standard be royalty and license-fee free. Unfortunately, some
ambiguity still exists as to the patent status of JPEG-2000 Part 1.
So, whether the Working Group's objective (of a free-to-use standard)
will be achieved remains to be seen. Also, due to this uncertainty,
one needs to be particularly sensitive to patent issues.
> You could also most definitely place a clarification in the license file
> as well explaining that your view is that modifications of the software
> that changed the software to be non-compliant with the JPEG2000 standard
> would violate the patent clause. This wouldn't be very different from
> what you have now. But it would push the restrictions out of your
> license and onto the law of the jurisdiction of the distributor.
> Something that we can't hold you or your license responsible for.
I could certainly ask the other JasPer Contributors whether they would
be willing to approve such a change. I should note, however, that this
precise issue has been discussed before, and at that time, the other
Contributors were not willing to drop the above compliance restriction.
Therefore, I am not very optimistic that such a change would meet with
their approval at the present time.
Placing the above patent issues aside for the moment, I am still having
some difficulties understanding why the compliance clause prevents you
from using JasPer. Can anyone give me an actual example of a project that
would like to use the JasPer JPEG-2000 codec in a non-interoperable
way? If not, then why is the compliance restriction an issue IN PRACTICE?
Is there a problem with the wording of the clause that makes it more
burdensome than intended? If so, there is a better chance that I would
be able to convince the other JasPer Contributors to correct such
an ambiguity (than removing the clause altogether).
Although I may not have explictly mentioned this before, please keep in
mind that the JasPer JPEG-2000 codec was developed in order to promote
the use of the JPEG-2000 standard. It is clearly in the interest of
the success of the standard to discourage the creation of
non-interoperable (i.e., non-compliant) implementations. This purpose
is also served by the compliance clause in the JasPer license.
Anyways, I just thought that this was worth mentioning. I think that
the patent issue is probably the more serious one.
Sincerely,
Michael
---
Michael Adams, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Elec. and Comp. Engineering, University of Victoria
P.O. Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3P6, CANADA
E-mail: mdadams@ece.uvic.ca, Web: www.ece.uvic.ca/~mdadams
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