FUSION should not be used commercially

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello from Japan,

I am sitting in a joint workshop at Chiba Uiversity (*) organized by Dr. Akira Kato. I am just listening to Dr. Monika Moskal of University of Washington and learn how to use FUSION to visualize and process my LiDAR data.

I always assumed FUSION was freeware that could be used for anything. But I learned today that this is not true. FUSION is only meant for research and education but should not be used commercially. Monika said that "If you have a company you should not use FUSION to create data sets that you will charge someone for". I was quite surprised by that - and I guess some of you are now surprised too - as I have heard on several occasions that folks are using FUSION for commercial production. So it seems the FUSION license is actually quite similar to the LAStools license (minus the point restrictions).

Regards,

Martin @rapidlasso

(*) http://rapidlasso.com/events

[Newcomb, Doug]

Martin,

I'm not sure that is correct.   I do not see any such restrictions on the website, and I  assumed that the software was free to use by anyone.  I'm ccing Bob McGaughey at the Forest Service to see if he can clarify the licensing.

Doug

--
Download LAStools at
http://lastools.org
http://rapidlasso.com
Be social with LAStools at
http://facebook.com/LAStools
http://twitter.com/LAStools
http://linkedin.com/groups/LAStools-4408378
Manage your settings at
http://groups.google.com/group/lastools/subscribe

--

Doug Newcomb

USFWS

Raleigh, NC

919-856-4520 ext. 14 doug_n...@fws.gov

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The opinions I express are my own and are not representative of the official policy of the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service or Dept. of the Interior.   Life is too short for undocumented, proprietary data formats. As a federal employee, my email may be subject to FOIA request.

[mc...@u.washington.edu]

Just to clarify....

There are no restrictions on the use of FUSION for commercial purposes. The software and source code are public domain and about the only restriction on use is that you can't claim you wrote the software. FUSION does use some code that I did not write but none of this code carries restrictions against commercial use of software developed using the code. The attached PDF shows all of the code that I did not write and the associated copyright information. One piece of code related to TIN surface creation and the TINSurfaceCreate program carries some restrictions on developing commercial applications using the code (you need to get permission from the author of the code) but not on the commercial use of the code or programs based on the code.

I think Dr. Moskal's statement originated from a review of the full source code archive related to FUSION by attorneys representing a large forest products company in the United States. They found "copyright" notices and concluded that none of the FUSION software could be used within their company. She has former students who have gone on to work for the same company and they have communicated the FUSION-related restriction to her.

Bob

==========================================================
Bob McGaughey USDA Forest Service
(206) 543-4713 University of Washington
FAX (206) 685-0790 Bloedel 386
PO Box 352100
bmcga...@fs.fed.us Seattle, WA 98195-2100
==========================================================

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello Bob,

thank you for the clarification. I was actually questioning Monika's statement at the workshop (we even had to bring in a Japanese mediator as evident in the attached picture) as many folks seem to use FUSION alongside LAStools for production work. But Monika insisted that there was a piece of technology inside of FUSION that was only licensed for research and could not be used commercially. I am glad to hear that this is not the case ... (-:

Regards,

Martin

PS: Is the source code available somewhere? I'd be curious to look at it to better understand some of the more complex plot-based metrics inside of FUSION.

[Bernardino J. Buenaobra]

Hello Group:

Since discovering more than a year ago this is very useful, relevant and practical software I have used them extensively (with correspondence to Dr.Bob McGuaghey) specifically for generating canopy surface model and canopy height model I used FUSIO/LDV for our national LiDAR project financed the government under university partnership (which is a research effort for and by the university). I specifically used them for mapping heights of coconut trees from a study area in Cebu, Philippines and the scripting features as it is superb. I also complement it with LAStools. The feature I really like is that you have orthophotos you can overlay on a LAS raw file and cutting a polygon on the surfave cuts through the las layer instantaneously and I could search with a cylinder to peak on the height of the tree and actually view it in 3D (the cutaway) - amazing feature actually. For countries like the Philippines we rely on very limited funding and our natural resort is open source and FUSION/LDV is rather very usefull for us for both agriculture and forest/tress distribution study.

Regards,
Berns B.

---
Bernardino (Berns) Jerez Buenaobra
Senior Science Research Specialist
Data Processing Component
USC DOST-UP/NEC Project LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)
for Disaster Risk Exposure Assessment for Mitigation (DREAM)
2F J.Baumgartner Bldg.,Learning Resource Center (LRC)
University of San Carlos(Talamban Campus)
Nasipit Rd.,Talamban, Cebu City
Philippines 6000
Contact information:
Mobile: +639479582261
Office: +63322300100 local 188-190
Google+ berns.b...@gmail.com
Skype ID: poormanphysics
Professional Reference, Research and Education link:
http://ph.linkedin.com/pub/bernardino-buenaobra/16/42/637
________________________________________
From: mc...@u.washington.edu [mc...@u.washington.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 3:42 AM
To: LAStools - efficient command line tools for LIDAR processing
Subject: Re: [LAStools] FUSION should not be used commercially

________________________________

** LEGAL DISCLAIMER **

The information contained in this email (and any attachments) is confidential and may be subject to privilege. It is intended solely for the addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, or reproduction is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful; please notify the sender by return e-mail and delete the message from your system. The views, opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to the official business of the University shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by University of San Carlos.

[Thomas Knudsen]

Unless I'm misinterpreting Bob's list of copyright statements, the
source code actually *should* be available and FUSION *should* be
under the GNU GPL. The reasoning is this:

Since SDTS++ depends on the GNU getopt, which is under the GPL, this
means that SDTS++ *must* also be under the GPL (otherwise it would not
be allowed to use GNU getopt). I realize that this is not stated in
the SDTS++ source code, but to me it appears to be the consequence of
including GPL code in the code base.

FUSION in turn uses SDTS++ and following the same argument, must be
under the GPL - and since the software has been distributed in binary
form, any user should (according to the GPL) also be able to request
the source code.

Now, the really sticky stuff is that Jonathan Richard Shewchuk's
licence for triangle.c is incompatible with the GPL (because it limits
the user's right to redistribute commercially). Depending on whether
FUSION builds triangle as an executable or a library (both ways are
possible), this may or may not mean the licence clash is actually a
problem. But at least it means that different parts (binaries) of
FUSION must be under different licenses.

It may be possible (although please consider that I Am Not A Lawyer)
to untangle at least some of the licensing mess by forking SDTS++ and
replacing the GNU getopt with the getopt.c+getopt.h from FreeBSD,
OpenBSD or NetBSD, which are under more permissive licences.

Regards,

Thomas

[mc...@u.washington.edu]

More clarification...sorry to broadcast this to the entire LASTools group but the original question regarding commercial use of FUSION went out to the group so it only seems right to maintain the wide distribution.

After looking into the codebase a little more, the SDTS++ package is not used in any of the tools distributed with FUSION. I evaluated the potential of adding an internal component to convert surface models in SDTS format into FUSIONS's DTM format but instead settled on using an external program, SDTS2DTM.EXE, to do this conversion (a modified version of SDTS2DEM developed by the late Sol Katz with the US Bureau of Land Management). The source for SDTS++ was included in my source archive so I included the copyright and licensing information. I modified the copyright information document to reflect these changes.

The triangle package is only used in the TINSurfaceCreate tool. This code is linked into the LDV data viewer but it is not accessible in the version that is distributed publically. The GPL license does not limit commercial application of software but does place a requirement to distribute source code for any software developed using code that is licensed under GPL.

The source code for FUSION is and always has been available by request. I responded to Martin's request for source code offline and provided him with the link to the code for V3.40. I am a little behind in assembling the code archive for the most recent version of FUSION. I hesitate to "broadcast" the link to the source code as I can't provide any level of support for the source and, frankly, the source archive is a mess. If anyone is interested, drop me a note and I will provide a link to the latest archive.

Bob


==========================================================
Bob McGaughey USDA Forest Service
(206) 543-4713 University of Washington
FAX (206) 685-0790 Bloedel 386
PO Box 352100
bmcga...@fs.fed.us Seattle, WA 98195-2100
==========================================================

[Thomas Knudsen]

2015-11-12 20:32 GMT+01:00 <mc...@u.washington.edu>:
> The triangle package is only used in the TINSurfaceCreate tool.
> This code is linked into the LDV data viewer but it is not
> accessible in the version that is distributed publically.
> The GPL license does not limit commercial application

> of software (...)

Bob (+ LAStools group),

I realize that my words were a bit unclear regarding the GPL. The
problem is the inverse of what you appear to read out of my words.
Hence this clarification (although, again, please note that I Am Not A
Lawyer, and this is not legal advice):

It is correct that the GPL allows commercial redistribution.

The problem is that the Shewchuk licence does not. On the other hand,
the GPL does not allow licensor to impose any further limitations on
the licensee (in this case: limiting his/her right to redistribute
commercially).

So if you build software including both Shewchuk-licensed and GPL'ed
material, you are free to use it within your own organization, but you
cannot redistribute it in any legal way:

You would either have to use the GPL or the Shewchuk licence. If using
the GPL, you explicitly allow the licensee to redistribute the
material both commercially and non-commercially under the same terms.
But the moment he/she does that, he/she will be in violation of the
Shewchuk licence.

Otherwise, you could distribute (non-commercially only) under the
Shewchuk licence, but in this case you would yourself be in immediate
violation of the GPL.

Now, according to your clarification, it seems that FUSION does not
actually use SDTS++, and hence is not necessarily under the GPL, so
the problem really isn't a problem.

It does, however, illuminate the problem of arbitrary or unclear code
licences: Really never ever use anything else than a OSI approved
licence, http://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical , if you want
your code to be of any use to anybody. Any "hand crafted special
purpose licence" will severely limit the practical usefulness of the
code.

Hope this clarifies things
/Thomas