incompatible licences and other issues

[Don Hooper]

I am concerned that one apparently uncredentialed (where has he been admitted
to the bar to practice law?  Folks who *are* qualified to speak on such matters
generally don't distribute their opinions for free) person would have us
dispense with major chunks of GrADS functionality at his behest.  I also think
"strange" is by no means a substantive comment; what's next, complaints about
code odor?  I can tell you right now, gasdf.c stinks to high heaven.  ;)

On one technical note (complaint #5), the libz.a compression library is needed
by the HDF library.  So, I guess zlib.h isn't technically needed.  A small
matter.

-Hoop
> From owner-gradsusr at LIST.CINECA.IT  Mon Sep 19 02:41:07 2005
> From: Patrice Dumas <pertusus at FREE.FR>
>
> Hi,
>
> Some issues with grads:
>
> 1) Incompatible licences
>
> First of all you should stop distributing lats as the licence is not
> compatible with the GPL.
>
> You shouldn't distribute gxeps.c either as there is an
> advertising clause incompatible with the GPL
> "Credit must be given in user-accessible documentation".
>
> Same for gxhpng.c because there is no licence statement so the code
> appears to be proprietary.
>
> 2) include of .c files in gxmeta.c
>
> If this changes, then you really shouldnt include gxeps.c in gxmeta.c.
> Similarly I don't think it is a good idea to include gxhpng.c in
> gxmeta.c.
>
> 3) gxgif.c
>
> The code of is file is very strange however it is unused. It really should
> be taken out from the distribution, it is very questionnable regarding
> copyright to have many copyrights and licences in one file.
>
> 4) gd13gif.c and associated files
>
> They seem to come from somewhere gd. What is very strange is that gd is
> used... These codes and files shouldn't be included in grads, and if they
> are really necessary they should be in a separate directory. Maybe the
> trouble comes from an issue with lzw patents? In that case the past
> grads code may have been illegal. This patent is now in the public
> domain and it seems to me that lzw support is back in gd. If my analysis
> is right a newer version of gd should be used.
>
> 5) zlib.h not included
>
> Another strange thing is that compress is used although zlib.h isn't
> included anywhere. This also seems wrong to me.
> --
> Pat