license confusion

OpenGL Development JOGL Development
#1

The JOGL homepage clearly states that the license for JOGL is a BSD license. However, the link to the license is a link to a generic BSD license template: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.html. In order to redistribute JOGL and conform to the license, I need to reproduce the Copyright notice. In order to reproduce the Copyright notice, I need to know the Copyright Year and the Copyright Owner (as outlined in the license template). I have searched for a complete JOGL license on the website and in the source and binary distributions, and a license is either not there or I have missed it. So, does anyone know the Copyright Year and Copyright Owner?

Thanks.
– Andrew

#2

Download the JOGL sources and look in nearly any of the source files for the license template at the top.

#3

While it’s true that the license and copyright info is found in the source files, it’s not really an ideal situation.

The license actually requires that binary distributions (jogl.jar) include a copy of the license. For my jogl binary
RPM package (for Fedora Core), I’ve extracted the copyright and license info from the sources and installed them as a
README file in /usr/share/doc/jogl-1.1.1. I also bundle a copy of the SGI Free Software License B, Version 1.1,
which is referenced in the jogl license.

It would be much more convenient if the JOGL project distributed this license info in an easy to distribute form so
people wanting to distribute jogl.jar don’t have to go through this process themselves.

#4

You’re right, I’d forgotten about the implicit inclusion of the SGI license due to our having ported some of the GLU sources. I’ve filed a bug about clarifying this.

#5

Hi guys –

I’ve been forced to “retire” my jogl RPM package from Fedora because of a licensing problem.

It turns out that the “SGI Free Software License B” isn’t actually a Free Software license as per the FSF. Here’s what they have to say about it:

[quote]The SGI Free Software License B, although its name says “free”, is not a free software License. It has three major problems. 1. It restricts its patent license to unmodified versions of the software. 2. It terminates if your use of the software infringes copyrights or patents which are not SGI’s. This is problematic because it gives SGI grounds to sue you even when you have done nothing to them. 3. The license requires you to inform SGI of legal problems with the software. This violates your privacy rights, and can conflict with professional confidentiality requirements, such as attorney-client privilege.
[/quote]
Interestingly, the mesa project also contained code with this license, but they relicensed this code in Mesa 7 when SGI relicensed their files as part of the OpenGL move to the khronos group.

Could you please review your use of the SGI OpenGL reference implementation code to see if it still must be licensed under the SGI Free Software License B? At the very least, please update the address for SGI legal in the source headers. Google now lives at that address and SGI has moved to Sunnyvale.

Thanks!

Anthony Green

#6

This seems like a harsh overreaction. Sun’s legal team reviewed our use of the code covered under the SGI FreeB license and (with our prodding) approved it despite potential legal exposure to Sun.

I don’t think SGI’s OpenGL sample implementation has been relicensed. I just downloaded the Mesa 7 sources and there is no mention of the Khronos group anywhere. The portions of code we are using (the GLU tessellator and mipmap code) have as far as I know been written basically once in the industry and we’re not going to pull out their inclusion in JOGL. Both Mesa and XFree86 seem to be comfortable including code covered by the SGI FreeB license.

If you have a more concrete pointer regarding a relicensing of this code I’ll look into it.

#7

Hello,

I am working on Scilab and the next version of Scilab will be using JoGL. To be able to provide Scilab for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora… we need to have JoGL packaged in the distribution.
I updated an already existing Debian package of JoGL of the version 1.1.1-rc7 but this license issue will probably be a problem for the integration in Debian.

However, it seems that it is not a standard “SGI Free Software License B” but a one modified by Sun.

I just check the source impacted and you can see in the header (file jogl/src/classes/com/sun/opengl/impl/tessellator/Normal.java)

The JOGL source tree contains code ported from the OpenGL sample implementation by Silicon Graphics, Inc. This code is licensed under the SGI Free Software License B (Sun is redistributing the modified code under a slightly modified, alternative license, which is described two paragraphs below after “NOTE:”):

The NOTE: is "
NOTE: The Original Code (as defined below) has been licensed to Sun Microsystems, Inc. (“Sun”) under the SGI Free Software License B (Version 1.1), shown above (“SGI License”). Pursuant to Section 3.2(3) of the SGI License, Sun is distributing the Covered Code to you under an alternative license (“Alternative License”). This Alternative License includes all of the provisions of the SGI License except that Section 2.2 and 11 are omitted. Any differences between the Alternative License and the SGI License are offered solely by Sun and not by SGI."

What are the Section 2.2 and 11 ?
Here is the licence : http://oss.sgi.com/projects/FreeB/
The section 2.2 is about “Recipient License Grant” and the 11 is about Indemnity.

Reading these two sections, I don’t think Sun’s modifications fix problems highlighted by the FSF but since I am not a lawyer …

#8

When we were finalizing JSR-231 1.0.0 the lawyers went over the licenses covering third-party code we were incorporating into the reference implementation. You’re right, they eliminated these two sections, which were two of the problematic ones, but I also agree with you that it probably doesn’t address the FSF’s concerns.

The bottom line is this: if Debian integrates Mesa then there is no issue with Debian integrating JOGL. Mesa includes the exact same code (the C port of it, not our Java port) under the exact same license.

Perhaps someone who cares deeply about this issue should approach the Khronos group about getting the GLU reference implementation relicensed under BSD or a compatible license (not GPL or LGPL).