Re: RFC: Ermapper ECW multi-licenses (long)

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@fastmail.fm>]

Francesco Paolo Lovergine wrote:

> Background:
> 
> ECW is a prioprietary (patented) compressed image format quite used in
> GIS applications. Ermapper recently released its SDK under a multi-license
> here included.
> It would be nice distributing under non-free at least some programs with
> ecw support enabled (mainly gdal which is X/MIT licensed, other programs
> could use gdal support to read/write ECW files, in some cases they are
> GPL). Both free and public licenses are quite complicated...

Good grief.  Brain-bleed.

The "interesting" clause in the "Public" license is this one:

"This license applies to any use of the Software Product solely intended to
develop or be distributed with products that are licensed under a license
similar to a General Public License ("GPL") and at no charge to the
public."

I suppose that distributing it in Debian's non-free archive is "solely
indended to... be distributed with" products licensed under the GPL, so the
license applies.  I think.  (If the license doesn't apply, obviously the
license is not usable for non-free.)

The text of the license appears to be OK for non-free.
(It's not OK for main because of (1)(b)(iii), (1)(e)(iii), (4), and because
the EULA claims to apply to things not covered by copyright,
like "using" the software.)

It looks like the "Free" license may be unusable, because of (2)(iv):
(iv) you do not permit further redistribution of the REDISTRIBUTABLE
COMPONENTS by your end-user customers 

Which I think pretty much makes it impossible for Debian's mirror network.

-- 
Nathanael Nerode  <neroden@fastmail.fm>

Bush admitted to violating FISA and said he was proud of it.
So why isn't he in prison yet?...