[Insight-developers] ITK/SZIP license incompatibility?

[Williams, Norman K]

That CMakeLists.txt is part of the 'real' HDF5 distribution. There's a
procedure in place to track HDF5 releases in the ITK tree, so no local
mods of files from the official HDF source code.


On 7/20/11 10:52 AM, "Cory Quammen" <cquammen at cs.unc.edu> wrote:

>On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 11:34 AM, Williams, Norman K
><norman-k-williams at uiowa.edu> wrote:
>> SZip is optionally configured when you build HDF5, and it is a separate
>> download.  It probably isn't included in HDF5 for the same reason it
>>can't
>> be included in ITK -- license incompatibility.
>>
>> We don't switch on SZip processing, so I don't think it's an issue with
>> respect to ITK.
>
>Ok, that's good. In that case, is it necessary in that case to have
>the SZIP_USE_EXTERNAL option in
>Modules/ThirdParty/HDF5/src/itkhdf5/CMakeLists.txt file? (Or
>ZLIB_USE_EXTERNAL, for that matter)?
>
>> The only (extremely unlikely) scendario would be where the ITK transform
>> or Image HDF5 reader was called upon to read a file generated by a third
>> party that happened to use SZIP compression.  I can't imagine that ever
>> being a real-world issue -- in order to write an ITK HDF5 file outside
>>of
>> ITK, you'd have to conform to the way we lay out the attributes and data
>> in our readers & writers.  Telling people to not use SZIP compression in
>> their HDF5 files isn't a hardship.
>>
>> IIRC if you want compression in an HDF5 file you have to ask for it via
>> the API, and you say specifically which compressor to use.
>> --
>> Kent Williams norman-k-williams at uiowa.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 7/20/11 10:18 AM, "Cory Quammen" <cquammen at cs.unc.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>SZIP is used by HDF5 which has recently been integrated into ITK.
>>>
>>>Working on another project, I read the SZIP license, copied from their
>>>webpage (http://www.hdfgroup.org/doc_resource/SZIP/) below:
>>>
>>>The version of Szip distributed with HDF products is free for
>>>non-commercial use, which may occur in two sets of circumstances:
>>>Non-commercial users may use the Szip software integrated with HDF
>>>products to both encode (compress) and decode (uncompress) data. This
>>>applies to educational and research applications.
>>>Commercial users may use the software to decode any data. Further,
>>>they may use the software in internal activities that do not involve
>>>or result in the development of an Szip-based software product.
>>>Commercial licenses are available for commercial users who wish to
>>>distribute an Szip-based software product or engage in commercial uses
>>>that are not allowed above. For further licensing information or to
>>>view a copy of the Szip copyright statement, see Commercial use terms
>>>and the copyright and license notice pertaining to Szip in HDF
>>>products.
>>>
>>>The full copyright and license statement is available here:
>>>http://www.hdfgroup.org/doc_resource/SZIP/Commercial_szip.html
>>>
>>>My understanding is that this is incompatible with the ITK license.
>>>Worse, SZIP contains code encumbered by several patents (listed in the
>>>copyright and license statement above).
>>>
>>>Thoughts?
>>>
>>>Cory
>>>
>>>--
>>>Cory Quammen
>>>Research Associate
>>>Department of Computer Science
>>>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>>>http://www.cs.unc.edu/~cquammen
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>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>--
>Cory Quammen
>Research Associate
>Department of Computer Science
>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>http://www.cs.unc.edu/~cquammen



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