[Paraview] GPL and Paraview and Qt

[Bonnie]

Berk, Sean, and Hendrik, thanks for the answers!

It sounds like the plug-in interface is exactly what I would want for our application.  We make custom surgical guides for total knee replacement surgery by processing MRI data.  These guides would only be made inhouse, and I want to use a slightly customized Paraview for viewing results.  So for us the GUI part is a small part.  

Do you have any idea when that will that be ready in Paraview III?

-Bonnie


>Hi Bonnie,
>
>although I'm no lawyer, I had to deal with a similar problem some years ago. 
>Don't take this too seriously, this is only my point of view based on my 
>experience with similar issues. I definitely suggest to ask some GPL guru on 
>this for a final statement.
>
>Anne it absolutely right in stating that you have to publish your code under a 
>GPL license when using the open source license of Qt. But be also aware of the 
>fact that you only need to share the source code when distributing your 
>binaries. Since you're developing an in-house project, you're not sharing your 
>binary versions, which in turn means that you don't have to publish your 
>source code in the open.
>
>> It is whether or not we would post the source to our changes back to the 
>open source community.
>
>In fact, this is not what the GPL states. It only states that you have to 
>distribute your source code along with your binary version. 
>
>> Can someone please clarify theimplications of GPL?  If I extend Paraview to 
>invoke our commercial applications via a custom .dll, I could make Paraview 
>extensions available, butI wouldn’t make the custom .dll available.  Is this 
>complying withGPL?  We wouldn’t be reselling the SW – only using it in-house.
>
>This is not complying with the GPL.  As soon as you make paraview dependent on 
>your in-house modules, you need to share these. The only way to prevent this 
>is to implement loose coupling, e.g. making a GPLed plugin interface for 
>paraview which you could use in-house for your own plugins that you won't 
>distribute. Using dynamic linking is not enough.
>
>> We will be adding enhancements to itkSnapand Paraview at least, if not vtk 
>and itk.  And we would be able to postthose to the open source community as 
>long as we can have some custom .dllswhich we don’t share.
>
>I cannot see what this has to do with the actual problem. Are those additions 
>to itkSNAP and Paraview equivalent to your own in-house modules? Are these 
>used by your in-house modules?
>
>> Do I understand this correctly?  Ifwe did want to sell an app that depends 
>on vtk .dlls, other than keeping thecopy left in place, am I free to do this?
>
>Yes, VTK, like ITK, is licensed under a BSD-Style license which does not 
>restrict any commercial and/or close-source distribution of your application.
>
>
>Regards,
> Hendrik