PanoTools:
Re: PTGui 5.0beta3
JD Smith 2005-Sep-13 21:45:25
On Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:03:15 +0000, GregStumph wrote:
>> I can't help but feel that our community's permissive "look the other
>> way" stance regarding the commercial front-ends' use of the GPL'd
>> PanoTools (in technical violation of that license) has finally come back
>> to bite us in the worst possible way.
>
> My (admittedly limited) understanding of the GPL is that it allows
> re-distribution and/or inclusion in commercial packages, as long as the
> source code for the GPL-ed portion is made available. I'm not sure what
> violation you're referring to.
That's actually not the case. You may be thinking of the "LGPL" or
lesser GPL license, which does specifically permit linking to
libraries without opening your source, and which some libraries use
for this purpose (and which libpano does not). From the GPL FAQ:
You have a GPL'ed program that I'd like to link with my code to build
a proprietary program. Does the fact that I link with your program
mean I have to GPL my program?
Yes.
That said, the violation has been a technical one only, since the
original copyright holder (Prof. Dersch) or someone else attached to
the copyright would have to enforce it. From my point of view,
however, the damage has been done. In as much as the front-end
builders have been contributing back to the open tools which formed
the core of their applications, it has been a worthwhile trade to
overlook their technical violation of the GPL; everyone was
benefiting. However, the danger of such a setup is now clear: it's a
short step from linking GPLd code into a closed source program, to
re-implementing that core entirely closed. Perhaps these improvements
could find their way back into libpano and its satellite tools, but
that would be up to the developer; normally, it's a one-way process.
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