Radiance license

Hi,

is the license located here the most recent license?

http://radsite.lbl.gov/radiance/announcement.html

The reason I ask is that I'm fairly certain that I had read a page
that stated that radiance had been changed to a license that was GPL
compatible (i don't recall if it was BSD, MIT, LGPL, or another), but
now I cannot find the page again even after extensive google
searching,

Thanks for your time,

Tom M.

Hi Tom,

The current license is contained in the "copyright.h" header in the ray/src/common directory, attached. I don't know whether or not it is GPL-compatible. Perhaps you can tell me.

-Greg

copyright.h (2.94 KB)

Hi Greg,

thank you for your response,

I contacted the Free Software Foundation and they stated that the
license is GPL incompatible.

However there is a more recent license (I think it is revision of the
license you are using) used by many Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory projects that is GPL compatible

http://crd.lbl.gov/~xiaoye/SuperLU/License.txt
http://www-didc.lbl.gov/NetLogger/license.html
http://nowlab.cse.ohio-state.edu/projects/mpi-iba/LICENSE.TXT
http://archive.nsf-middleware.org/NMIR4/grids-center/license_pyglobus.asp

thanks for your time and thanks for the great piece of software.

Tom M.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the links. If you think the current license is in some way inadequate, I suggest you write to Steve Selkowitz at LBNL directly, as I don't understand licenses or care about them much. The current license came from the patent office at LBNL, and I had nothing to do with it other than to stuff it into the distribution. I know the general purpose is to provide for the free use of the software for any purpose, and to protect LBNL and the UC Regents from any liability.

-Greg

ยทยทยท

From: Tom M <[email protected]>
Date: October 29, 2005 1:15:40 PM PDT

Hi Greg,

thank you for your response,

I contacted the Free Software Foundation and they stated that the
license is GPL incompatible.

However there is a more recent license (I think it is revision of the
license you are using) used by many Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory projects that is GPL compatible

http://crd.lbl.gov/~xiaoye/SuperLU/License.txt
http://www-didc.lbl.gov/NetLogger/license.html
http://nowlab.cse.ohio-state.edu/projects/mpi-iba/LICENSE.TXT
http://archive.nsf-middleware.org/NMIR4/grids-center/license_pyglobus.asp

thanks for your time and thanks for the great piece of software.

Tom M.

Hi Greg,

I don't think the license is inadequate, sorry if I came across that
way. Thank you for your suggestion though,

Tom M.

Hi Tom,

I was working at LBNL during the time that the Radiance license was working its way through the LBNL Patents office. This was during Greg's stint at SGI then Shutterfly when I acted as the surrogate (illigitimate) father of Radiance. It was a long and sordid trail through the anals of a huge bureaucracy. I think I first brought up the idea of an open source license in 1992. There were at least five different stakeholders whose interests had to be balanced in coming up with the license that exists now. But before we could even get the Patents office attention, we had to show that it was a commercially viable technology and that it wasn't stepping on any big player's toes. It was through the sales of 3 or 4 $10,000 older-style licenses to folks like Georg Mischler that got their attention. I did quite a bit of patent research and found some potentially conflicting claims held by Pixar for stuff related to pseudo-random adaptive subdivision of the image plane. This was resolved
by writing Pixar a letter telling them our plans and never getting a response. And strangely enough, once the LBNL patents office had some money to stash away to help in the legal defence against the possibility that someone could become "harmed" by using Radiance, they were then willing to listen to another, less costly, open-source-like licensing scheme. We hammered on them about various license schemes including GPL and OSF, etc. The final touches on the license were completed after I moved onto greener pastures. But in the end, what we've got is much better than we expected. My suggestion is not to bother the likes of Steve Selkowitz, and to make what we've got work for you, and if it doesn't, look for your ray tracing solution elsewhere.

-Chas