re: copyright issue

Bob Friesenhahn has posted to two public mailing list now suggesting
that I am violating copyright.  This is a bold and potentially libelous
statement to make.  I can assure everyone I'm not and I have informed
Bob that further such public statement will force ImageMagick Studio
LLC to take action against him and the GraphicsMagick Group.

For some background I am the original author of ImageMagick and have
written most of the ImageMagick core.  Bob worked with me for several
years but after receiving literally hundreds of flame-o-grams from him I
encouraged him to create a separate groups which is now GraphicsMagick.
I had a problem with the prerelease of GraphicsMagick because the
original ImageMagick copyright statements were removed as well as the
source module authors.  I see he has since restored them.  Even before
GraphicsMagick source was posted I had access to the Changelog and made
a number of changes to ImageMagick using the GraphicsMagick Changelog as
a reference.  I interpretted the changes as suggestions and bug fixes.
Shortly thereafter I adopted a number of GraphicsMagick improvements
and attributed them in the Changelog and added the GraphicsMagick to
Copyright.txt in the ImageMagick distribution.  In it I say:

  In November 2002, the GraphicsMagick Group created GraphicsMagick from
  ImageMagick Studio's ImageMagick source.  ImageMagick adopted some of
  their improvements to existing programs and scripts, including:

    Unix configure
    Installation instructions
    Test programs
    PerlMagick test scripts JP2 image coder Windows configure Windows
    IMDisplay
    Windows ATL COM

Note that I got permission from Bill Radcliffe to include the configure/
ImageMagickObject into ImageMagick.  It does not appear to have a 
GraphicsMagick copyright in the source.

In addition when ImageMagick 5.5.7 was released I credited Bob, Bill,
Glenn, and Leonard for the improvements I made to ImageMagick 5.5.7.

Finally in regards to patterns.  I wrote logo.c.  Bob added patterns.  This
simply means you take an image and convert it using the logo.c encoder to
create a .h file and then add this back to the logo.c module.  When you have
lots of these it necessitates using a table so I created a table.  Sure
our code looks similiar because we both coded exactly what should be coded.
A simple set of defines for the patterns and access from a table.  Bob
mistakely believes that I took his logo.c, stripped the copyright, and
added my own.  He is simply wrong.  I should add the Changelog states

    * Adopted Bob Friesenhahn's patterns-- use as filename pattern:checkboard,
    pattern:bricks, etc.

and the Copyright.txt files says:

  Many of the pattern images in coders/pattern.c are derived from XFig,
  which is distributed under the following license:
  
  FIG : Facility for Interactive Generation of figures
  Copyright (c) 1985-1988 by Supoj Sutanthavibul
  Parts Copyright (c) 1989-2000 by Brian V. Smith
  Parts Copyright (c) 1991 by Paul King

  Any party obtaining a copy of these files is granted, free of charge, a
  full and unrestricted irrevocable, world-wide, paid up, royalty-free,
  nonexclusive right and license to deal in this software and
  documentation files (the "Software"), including without limitation the
  rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
  and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons who receive
  copies from any such party to do so, with the only requirement being
  that this copyright notice remain intact.

If you check the ImageMagick source code you will find at least 100
mentions of Bob and the GraphicsMagick group.

I should further note that Bob is currently using a majority of the
ImageMagick web pages and yes I have adopted some of his improved pages.
I should also note that Bob has adopted some new ImageMagick algorithms
such as cache.c and a number of fixes I have recently made.  He has
attributed some of the improvements to me and others not.

I have come to the conclusion that Bob is after something more than
compliance or attribution.  I suspect he may be trying to diminish
ImageMagick in some fashion perhaps to promote the use of GraphicsMagick.
I personally have better things to do with my time, like improving
ImageMagick, and fixing bugs.  This will be my last public comment on
this issue.