ImageMagick vs GraphicsMagick

I receive a lot of emails from GraphicsMagick users, or potential
GraphicsMagick users, who are under the impression that GraphicsMagick
absorbs, or should absorb, code updates from ImageMagick.

GraphicsMagick has picked up very few enhancements from ImageMagick
since the fork.  With the exception of the Wand API library,
substantial updates from ImageMagick have been constrained to
ImageMagick components which were under development (and incomplete)
at the time GraphicsMagick branched from ImageMagick.

Recently ImageMagick 5.5.8 Beta has changed its license terms from
terms which served ImageMagick well for some twelve years to a new
license. The new license is similar to the one used by libpng.  While
the new license also seems like an appropriate license for an open
source package, it is more limited than the original license.  The new
license is clearly designed to strongly discourage source code "forks"
or distributions of modified source code.  The license encourages that
the copyright holder be the sole source of the package.

When evaluating a copyright license, it is important to know that by
default a copyright holder retains all rights to the work, and unless
the license explicitly grants a right, that right is automatically
retained by the copyright holder.

The key limitations of the new licence vs the old license are:

  o No provision is made for offering the package under a different
    license.
  o The copyright and license statement must be preserved "as is" on
    all source files.

GraphicsMagick continues to use a license statement which is
equivalent to the one that ImageMagick used for twelve years.  If we
incorporate substantial ImageMagick code in an existing module, then
that module is effectively "signed away" to ImageMagick Studio LLC (a
limited liability corporation solely owned by John Cristy) and we
loose the ability to offer that module under the more liberal
GraphicsMagick license.

This very unfortunate turn of events means that ImageMagick may
continue to liberally copy work from GraphicsMagick, but
GraphicsMagick may not safely copy work from ImageMagick.  This places
GraphicsMagick at a disadvantage.

In the past, some ImageMagick code has been copied into other open
source projects.  Some of these projects are LGPL or GPL licensed.
The new ImageMagick license effectively prevents any reuse of
ImageMagick code in such projects, although LGPL and GPL projects may
continue to link with the ImageMagick libraries since ImageMagick is
open source and the new license does not limit source redistribution.

GraphicsMagick will continue to copy the Magick Wand library
implementation from ImageMagick since this library is layered on top
of GraphicsMagick and can be offered under the new ImageMagick license
without impacting the rest of the package.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
[email protected]
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen



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