On 4 Dec 2001, at 8:00, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
> At 02:22 PM 12/4/2001 +0100, Raphael Quinet wrote:
> >- This may be controversial, but ImageMagick has a BSD-style license
> > that includes the "advertising clause".
>
> ImageMagick has NO license. The only thing we say is:
> ImageMagick is copyrighted by ImageMagick Studio LLC, a non-profit
> organization. ImageMagick is available for free, may be used to
> support both open and proprietary applications, and may be
> redistributed without fee.
Erm, that's a license you have given right there. There may not be a
lawyer behind it, but it is still a license.
I realise that for coders thinking of all these pesky legal matters
is a nuisance more than anything else, but there are coders on trial
for not looking at the legal small print at this very moment. We may
not like the laws, but they are the laws nonetheless.
Here's the ImageMagick license as the main ImageMagick FTP site lists
it:
<begin>
COPYRIGHT Copyright (C) 2001 ImageMagick Studio, a non-profit
organization dedicated to making software imaging solutions freely
available.
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.
The software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind,
express or implied, including but not limited to the warranties of
merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and
noninfringement. In no event shall ImageMagick Studio be liable for
any claim, damages or other liability, whether in an action of
contract, tort or otherwise, arising from, out of or in connection
with ImageMagick or the use or other dealings in ImageMagick.
Except as contained in this notice, the name of the ImageMagick
Studio shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the
sale, use or other dealings in ImageMagick without prior written
authorization from the ImageMagick Studio.
</begin>
> > This is not compatible with
> > the GPL and this means that any code contributed to ImageMagick
> > and any improvements that could be done in that code cannot be
> > re-used later in the Gimp (maybe in a plug-in, but not in the
> > core).
I'll have to look it up again, but the way I understand it, the
ImageMagick license is a free software license, compatible with the
GPL. Also, since you are allowed to add extra licenses to the GPL
(IIRC, again, I'd have to look it up and am too tired at the mo to
wade through the legal mumbo-jumbo), it would perhaps be possible to
bring ImageMagick code under the GPL
And of course, if we thought we could use some ImageMagick code, we
could always ask the authors to also bring the bits of code we need
out under the GPL. One is allowed to publish his/her own works under
several, differing licenses.
>I would not expect that any of the code that is written to
>support XCF in ImageMagick would make it way back into Gimp (since it's
> really us trying to support things you already do). HOWEVER, you are welcome
> to take ANY code from ImageMagick and incorporate it into the Gimp to
> your heart's content!
This is a license too, although I am not sure you are enough of a
legal representative of ImageMagick to supply it.
Oh, and IANAL.
--
branko collin
collin@xxxxxxxxx
