Bug 352435 – OpenCascade, FreeCAD and the surrounding license mess / Can we have this in tree?

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Andreas K. Hüttel 2011-01-22 19:43:01 UTC]

Dear trustees, 

1) opencascade is a huge 3d-cad-kernel library with its own license (similar to lgpl but not really compatible to anything imho)
2) freecad, a cad program, is part lgpl and part gpl
3) freecad uses opencascade
4) freecad uses gpl libraries (coin 3d)

Right now opencascade and freecad are in the sci overlay. From a purely technical point of view it would be nice to have them in the main tree, but as you can see the licensing situation is more than screwed up. What shall / can we do with it?

This is (as far as I am concerned) in no way urgent, so take your time.

Here are some pointers:
[1] http://www.opencascade.org/ the OpenCascade homepage
[2] http://www.opencascade.org/getocc/license/ the OpenCascade license (note that it is NOT clear whether the "preamble" is part of the license!)
[3] http://www.opencascade.org/occt/faq/
[4] http://www.opencascade.org/org/forum/thread_15859/ Forum discussion about the license preamble
[5] http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page
[6] http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Licence
[7] http://www.coin3d.org/licensing/
[8] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=459125
[9] http://old.nabble.com/opencascade-license-in-squeeze-td27571525.html

[Comment 1 Matija "hook" Šuklje 2011-01-22 20:10:50 UTC]

More info about the OCCT Public Licence:
* neither FSF nor OSI have approved of it so far;
* Debian had a lenghtly thread[1] about it and decided it is a non-free license.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2007/12/msg00066.html

That's the most time I can spare on this ATM.

[Comment 2 David Abbott (RETIRED) 2011-01-22 22:07:22 UTC]

I put it on the agenda for the Feb Trustee meeting;
http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/minutes/2011/201102_trustees_agenda.xml

[Comment 3 tman 2011-03-03 13:18:04 UTC]

maybe some one can help us. i have request this in main portage tree since a while. http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=291161

but nothing work really fine. in the science overlay the ebuild compile fine but it dont work. some function are quite missing.

maybe some developer can improve this and add it to the portage tree.

thanks

[Comment 4 Richard Freeman 2011-04-10 17:43:36 UTC]

Just a note that in the Feb trustees meeting it was decided that it was fine to put these packages in portage, though with restrictions on mirroring and bindist:
http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/minutes/2011/20110220_trustees.meeting_log.txt

[Comment 5 Andreas K. Hüttel 2011-04-10 19:48:33 UTC]

Meaning we can resolve this. :)

[Comment 6 Ulrich Müller 2013-08-04 10:45:28 UTC]

(In reply to Richard Freeman from comment #4)
> Just a note that in the Feb trustees meeting it was decided that it was fine
> to put these packages in portage, though with restrictions on mirroring and
> bindist:
> http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/minutes/2011/20110220_trustees.meeting_log.txt

I don't understand why we would need mirror restriction. There's also no real rationale for it in the meeting minutes.

[Comment 7 Richard Freeman 2013-08-04 12:01:52 UTC]

(In reply to Ulrich Müller from comment #6)
> (In reply to Richard Freeman from comment #4)
> > Just a note that in the Feb trustees meeting it was decided that it was fine
> > to put these packages in portage, though with restrictions on mirroring and
> > bindist:
> > http://www.gentoo.org/foundation/en/minutes/2011/20110220_trustees.meeting_log.txt
> 
> I don't understand why we would need mirror restriction. There's also no
> real rationale for it in the meeting minutes.

It seems like restrict=bindist on freecad would make more sense.  No real issues occur until things get linked.  Opencascade itself may or may not be free, but it seems redistributable.  So the only debate there should be license group inclusion (best not to treat as free, as the documenting changes stuff would catch people by surprise).

[Comment 8 Thomas Raschbacher 2014-07-22 12:35:58 UTC]

I just found this:

Since the version 6.7.0 Open CASCADE Technology is available under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 with additional exception. Previous OCCT releases are licensed under Open CASCADE Technology Public License.

Source:

http://www.opencascade.org/getocc/license/

I think this means the bug coudl be closed now ^^

[Comment 9 Robin Johnson 2016-03-27 23:11:49 UTC]

Closing bug since upstream relicensed freely.