[IPOL discuss] software license for IPOL code: GPL is good!

[Nicolas Limare]

Hi all,

A few recent events suggest that using the GPL license for code
published in IPOL is a good choice.

* Two companies want to use include algorithms published in IPOL by
  reusing the code published here too. This code is under the GPL
  license and these companies do not want to be bound by the license
  terms, so they proposed to buy the rights to reuse this code under
  different conditions.
* One company is selling a photo enlargement software (without the
  source code) that includes one code published in IPOL. This IPOL
  code is published under the BSD license and the photo software
  mentions it, so the story stops here. But their software also
  includes another non-IPOL code, under GPL this time, so there is a
  license infringement and some people are trying to have the software
  company release their code (or pay for a license agreement) with the
  Free Software Foundation legal team.
* Moreover, one company is supporting the work done by an IPOL author
  by funding a PhD and is not objecting to the publication of this
  work under GPL as long as they also have the code internally under
  BSD license (they paid for it!).

I think these examples show that by using GPL, authors can share their
research work with other researchers and collaborators and benefit
from its commercial value. Therefore I recommend that this license is
used for every non-trivial piece of code published in IPOL.



PS: In short, non-legal words, the GPL license says that anyone can use
your source code for any purpose, but if a program using your source
code is distributed, then 
- your contribution must be mentioned;
- all the source code used is under the GPL license;
- all the source code must be publicly available.

PPS: The copyright of the code published in IPOL is owned by you (or
your employer), not by IPOL. The copyright owner decides which license
is used.

-- 
Nicolas LIMARE - CMLA - ENS Cachan         http://limare.perso.math.cnrs.fr/
IPOL journal                                             http://www.ipol.im/
-> image processing, reproducible research, open science
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