Re: ImageMagick vs GraphicsMagick

Any further discussion should be via
[email protected].  This response is Cc:ed
there to make any continuation of the discussion easy.

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003, Glenn Randers-Pehrson wrote:

> I don't see that in:
>
>      Permission is hereby granted to use, copy, modify, and distribute this
>      source code, or portions hereof, documentation and executables, for any
>      purpose, without fee,

For some reason you omitted the "subject to the following
restrictions:" clauses which seem quite important.

>       3. This Copyright notice may not be removed or altered from any source
>           or altered source distribution.
>
> I am not a lawyer, but I interpret that to mean that if there are a few
> dozen instances of the copyright notice in a distribution, at least one
> of them must be preserved.  In libpng, in fact we identify one of them

This is not what "altered from any source" means to me.  Since the
entire license statement is included at the top of every file, based
on this (and past discussions with Cristy) I must assume that this
means that the original header must be retained on each and every
source file, or added if a substantial block of copyrighted code is
copied into an existing source file.

With the old license, this was debatable, but the new license seems
pretty clear. Regardless, when multiple copyright licenses apply, the
most restrictive one is the one which must be used.

> That was certainly not intended by the authors of the zlib/libpng license,
> and the GNU folk have determined that zlib/libpng license is compatible
> with GPL.

You are confusing the meaning of "compatible with".  "Compatible with"
means that GPL packages are allowed to link with the code since the
source license does not limit redistribution.  It does not mean that
the code may be pasted into GPL/LGPL licensed source modules (as has
occured with IM code in the past).  The previous license allowed the
user to substitute his own preferred license (which could be GPL).

> I am not as alarmed about the change.  The reason for the switch was
> to reassure authors of proprietary packages that they could safely include
> ImageMagick in them.

The previous license clearly allowed and supported this:

  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
  copy of this software and associated documentation files ("ImageMagick"),
  to deal in ImageMagick without restriction, including without limitation
  the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
  and/or sell copies of ImageMagick, and to permit persons to whom the
  ImageMagick is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
  all copies or substantial portions of ImageMagick.

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



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