[Insight-developers] ITK/SZIP license incompatibility?

[Williams, Norman K]

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.

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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