Re: Pixbuf loader for jpeg2000?

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Fri, 2003-07-11 at 19:23, Chad A Daelhousen wrote:

> I had been planning on a separate loader that knew about the format
> itself, since I couldn't find anything to handle it besides the JasPer
> reference code.

Hmm, I don't think we would want a chunk of code as big as I suspect
would be needed for jpeg2000 to be in GTK+ itself. The builtin loaders
for GTK+ are for more or less simple formats that are basically
just wrappers around the bits.

If writing a jpeg2000 library was something that you were interested
in, I'd suggest writing it standalone so everybody could use it,
then include a gdk-pixbuf loader using your library as part of the
package.

> Speaking of JasPer, it appears to be licensed under something similar to
> the original BSD license. If this pixbuf loader is (eventually) to be
> included as part of GTK+, is that acceptable, or do I have to get a copy
> of ISO/IEC 15444-1 and write code from scratch?

BSD code with the advertising clause is generally speaking not suitable
for distribution with GTK+, since it is not GPL compatible.

For an independently installed loader, my personal feeling is that if
you write a independently installed pixbuf loader that:

 A) Uses only symbols from the publically installed GTK+ headers
 B) Does not incorporate code from GTK+
 C) Is not written as a paraphrase of code in GTK+

Then it is not a derived work of GTK+, and thus could be under any
license, even a proprietary license. 

(This is not a legal opinion, though I know of lawyers that have 
expressed similar opinions in cases that to me seem similar.)

Regards,
						Owen