This project is not GPL compatible, portions are not BSD licensed

[jahewson]

While the portions of code written by Sun are indeed under a 3-clause BSD license, the portions written by JJ2000 Partners are not.

The LICENSE.txt file starts with the phrase "Copyright (c) 2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved." which indicates that it is the license for the Sun portion of the code only. In case there are any doubts about this, the COPYRIGHT.txt file contains further Sun copyright information, including the phrase "This distribution may include materials developed by third parties", the implication being that those materials are distributed under separate copyright terms.

Unfortunately the code written by JJ2000 Partners is indeed distributed under different copyright terms, given at the top of each file:

* COPYRIGHT:
 *
 * This software module was originally developed by Raphaël Grosbois and
 * Diego Santa Cruz (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-EPFL); Joel
 * Askelöf (Ericsson Radio Systems AB); and Bertrand Berthelot, David
 * Bouchard, Félix Henry, Gerard Mozelle and Patrice Onno (Canon Research
 * Centre France S.A) in the course of development of the JPEG2000
 * standard as specified by ISO/IEC 15444 (JPEG 2000 Standard). This
 * software module is an implementation of a part of the JPEG 2000
 * Standard. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-EPFL, Ericsson Radio
 * Systems AB and Canon Research Centre France S.A (collectively JJ2000
 * Partners) agree not to assert against ISO/IEC and users of the JPEG
 * 2000 Standard (Users) any of their rights under the copyright, not
 * including other intellectual property rights, for this software module
 * with respect to the usage by ISO/IEC and Users of this software module
 * or modifications thereof for use in hardware or software products
 * claiming conformance to the JPEG 2000 Standard. Those intending to use
 * this software module in hardware or software products are advised that
 * their use may infringe existing patents. The original developers of
 * this software module, JJ2000 Partners and ISO/IEC assume no liability
 * for use of this software module or modifications thereof. No license
 * or right to this software module is granted for non JPEG 2000 Standard
 * conforming products. JJ2000 Partners have full right to use this
 * software module for his/her own purpose, assign or donate this
 * software module to any third party and to inhibit third parties from
 * using this software module for non JPEG 2000 Standard conforming
 * products. This copyright notice must be included in all copies or
 * derivative works of this software module.
 *
 * Copyright (c) 1999/2000 JJ2000 Partners.

This is not a BSD license, nor is it GPL compatible, see the following clauses, with emphasis added:

• Swiss Federal Institute of Technology-EPFL, Ericsson Radio Systems AB and Canon Research Centre France S.A (collectively JJ2000 Partners) agree not to assert against ISO/IEC and users of the JPEG 2000 Standard (Users) any of their rights under the copyright, not including other intellectual property rights, for this software module with respect to the usage by ISO/IEC and Users of this software module or modifications thereof for use in hardware or software products claiming conformance to the JPEG 2000 Standard.
• No license or right to this software module is granted for non JPEG 2000 Standard conforming products.
• JJ2000 Partners have full right to use this software module for his/her own purpose, assign or donate this software module to any third party and to inhibit third parties from using this software module for non JPEG 2000 Standard conforming products.

[stain]

Hi, apologies for late reply. I must admit I had not spotted this code comment when I replicated this code from java.net.

I agree that this is not GPL-compatible as it requires the code to be JPEG 2000 Standard conforming - we don't know if it even is conforming the way it is now. It means it is also removing the right to say re-use some of the jj2000 code for a different purpose - although it seems to be OK as long as you are "claiming conformance" - which one could argue the JJ2000 reference implementation would claim.

It is certainly not GPL 3 compatible as that requires also a patent license.

I will proceed to try to split out the JJ2000 bits to a new repository/maven package jai-imageio-jpeg2000. As imageio is using SPIs it should be possible to keep it as an optional bit.

I must admit for University of Manchester's part, having support for JPEG 2000 in our LGPL software Taverna was the main motivation for using jai-imageio-core in the first place. The JJ2000 license above would remain compatible with LGPL as long as the dependency is replacable, which it should if I split this out.

[stain]

Closed: JPEG2000 support split out in version 1.2-pre-dr-b04-2014-09-12

[jahewson]

Looks good to me! Thanks.

[shikaiwen]

thanks for what you did