[vtk-developers] vtkPatented copyright...

[Brad King]

Goodwin Lawlor wrote:
> I was going to leave vtkPatented out of vtkit but Steve Pieper made a
> suggestion that may work:
> vtkit has vtkPatented statically linked (but not automatically loaded into
> the interpreter) but a tcl script must use "package require vtkpatented" in
> order to load and use the patented classes.
> 
> The "package require vtkpatented" call could also print out a
> copyright/patented notice to the console or popup a warning message box that
> the user must accept to continue. Also a warning on the vtkit download page
> could be put up.
> 
> This would make the user explicitly aware that the classes in vtkPatented
> can not be used for commercial applications without a license.
> 
> Would this be acceptable?

Probably, but again I'm not a lawyer nor have I seen the official 
agreements related to this.

> Should all tcl examples/tests require a "package require vtkpatented" when
> using patented classes?

We plan to phase out vtkPatented completely in 5.0 to avoid these 
issues.  The Marching Cubes patent expires in June 2005 anyway.

-Brad