[Fedora-packaging] License issue for all GIS related packages. [call for help]

Tom "spot" Callaway tcallawa at redhat.com
Mon Jun 25 18:56:17 UTC 2007


On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 10:02 -0500, Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:

> The new license looks ok to me, I will pass it along to the FSF for
> review, even though the EPSG dataset is content, not code, their opinion
> is always valued on licensing matters.

The FSF pointed out a few things:

1. The line between functional code and content is very blurry here.
This dataset is effectively code, as much a struct of PCI IDs would be.

2. The new changes in the EPSG dataset licensing are a strong step in
the right direction.

3. However, the license needs to explicitly allow all sorts of
modification.  Perhaps someone would want to add their own
coordinate reference system in the future. The new license text does not
permit this. A clause similar to that used in other licenses, where the
modified version must be marked as modified, may not call itself the
EPSG dataset, etc, etc, would be acceptable.

4. Without that explicit permission to modify the dataset, the license
is not considered Free, and is not acceptable for Fedora.

The FSF wanted to emphasize that they are appreciative of the hard work
done to improve this license, and they are willing to assist in the
process of amending this license so that it is Free.

~spot




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