cuneiform team mailing list archive

[Jussi Pakkanen <jpakkane@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 7:32 PM, Dmitry Polevoy
<openocr.polevoy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I am a newcomer in Open Source code and I need help. Is FreeImage Public
> License (http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/freeimage-license.txt) compatible
> with cuneiform license? Can I use FreeImage library
> (http://freeimage.sourceforge.net/license.html) to read/write image?

I am not a lawyer so the following is not legal advice and all that jazz.

I really, *really* hate projects that invent their own licenses. It
just adds unnecessary complications. That said, I don't see anything
that would make using it illegal. However there a couple of issues to
take note of.

The license page has a limitation similar to the "BSD advertising
clause" which is is incompatible with GPL. Then it says that you have
to use it even if you use the code under the GPL. This requirement
does not appear in the actual license text (or maybe it does, hidden
somewhere, I stopped wading through the legalese after a while). This
is ambiguous, which in legal issues is always bad.

> I have some experience of using this library and I can say it is more stable
> and use less memory, then ImageMagick.

Have you tried http://www.graphicsmagick.org/

It has the same goals as you mention and in addition should be 100%
compatible with ImageMagick so you should just be able to replace im
with gm and not change anything else.