[IPOL discuss] Patents and IPOL code

[Pascal Getreuer]

> Patent rights are bought and sold; I suggest to only refer to "the
> consent of the patent owner".

Good point!

> Is the full code "for research and educational purposes", or do these
> conditions apply only to the files implementing the patented
> algorithm?

Right, I am suggesting that this applies only to the files
implementing the patent.  The webpage says "for research and
educational purposes" while the license.txt file explains the precise
conditions.   The license.txt makes a distinction between files that
implement the patented algorithm vs. the other files.

_____________________________________________________
 Copyright (c) 2011, Your Name Here
 All rights reserved.

 The source file "dmha.c" implements the algorithm covered by U.S. Patent
 5629734.  For this reason, the source files "dmha.c", "dmha.h",
 "dmhacli.c" and its binary program "dmha" may only be used for research
 and educational purposes.  Redistribution or commercial use is not
 allowed without the consent of the patent owner.

 With the exception of the files mentioned above, redistribution and use in
 source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted
 provided that the following conditions are met:
 (the rest of usual BSD license follows)
_____________________________________________________

For files implementing the patent:
"may only be used for research and educational purposes" and
"redistribution or commercial use is not allowed without the consent
of the patent owner."

For all the other files:
"With the exception of the files implementing the patent mentioned
above, ..." (BSD/GPL license)

So the BSD/GPL only applies to the files that are not covered by patents.

Having this separate distinction is useful for example for the
self-similar demosaicking code, where Hamilton-Adams is used as an
initialization but actually the majority of the code is for the
self-similar demosaicking algorithm itself.  The license specifies
just the Hamilton-Adams part as "research and education use only, no
redistribution" and everything else as GPL.

Best,
Pascal