🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3shfp1$4a5@crcnis3.unl.edu>,
Steven Kuznicki <kuznicki@cse.unl.edu> wrote:
|rubinsnk@is2.nyu.edu (Kalman Rubinson) writes:
|
|>Gilbert S Pajela (gsp@blue.seas.upenn.edu) wrote:
|>: I am looking for a commercial image processing package, similar to NIH 
|>: Image for the Macintosh, that runs on a Unix platform.
|
|Better yet, Khoros is public domain and has full support ( a CD commercial
|version for V2.1 is supposed to be made available).  It has tons of
|features and developer support to create your own routines.  Check out
|their newsgroup at comp.soft-sys.khoros  The entire package can be ftp'd.

Khoros is NOT public domain! I quote from the license:

  RIGHT TO REDISTRIBUTE

  Permission to distribute this Software using electronic media and at no
  cost is granted, provided that the Software containts no modifications,
  provided that the distribution is  not assigned any price or value in
  any way, provided that the distribution is not combined with any
  product or service in any way, and provided that the distributed
  Software is identical to the Software that is currently being
  distributed at no cost via computer network by KRI.

  DERIVATIVE WORKS

  Permission to prepare derivative works or to modify the Khoros Software
  for internal use only is granted to Licensee. However, all rights to
  such modifications and derivative works, including all copyrights, are
  the property of KRI. New software developed by Licensee as a result of
  using the Khoros Software belongs to the author and is not bound by
  this license aggreement. However, any Khoros Software that is Loaded
  with the author's software is bound by this license agreement.


[Back to commentary]

  If Khoros *were* public domain, then KRI ==COULD NOT== assert ANY control
over its use or derivations from it. "Public domain" means just that:
a work is given to the Public to use as they see fit. If even *one* Right
is reserved by the author of the work, the piece is not Public Domain!!

  Note the bit in the license about copyrights on derivative works. Suppose
you trivially modify a Khoros program to (say) double some internal limit.
The new program is legally a derivative work. Because KRI reserves the
copyright on derivative work, and explicitly bans distribution of any
modified version of the software, you would have to seek the permission of
KRI before you could hand your trivially modified program to your co-worker
in the next office who had asked you to make the change in the first place!
(Yes, this is "internal use", but "internal use" does not necessarily
require copying of the derived work; and since it is -possible- for
the co-worker to be given a copy of the original and an exact set of
instructions on how to modify the software to get the derived version,
IMHO the license must be read narrowly as not allowing even internal
copying of a derived version.)


  I would also note that *after* gzip'ing all the postscript files, khoros
takes approximately 350 Mb of disk space. It also takes a lot of memory,
and has a nasty habit of creating files, sockets, and shared memory arenas
that it never cleans up after itself. We also detected an infinite
loop in 'craftsman' whereby it will continually retry to create a
directory if the first attempt fails... this will eventually fill up
the audit logs if the reason for the failure was that the user does not
have permission to create the directory 'craftsman' thinks it should be
creating :-(


  Overall, given these license restrictions and the high resource use of
khoros, I personally would recommend looking at other packages first,
and using khoros only if the others will not do what you want.

   Walter Roberson                 roberson@ibd.nrc.ca