[Proj] Problem with projections that need support libraries

[Frank J. OEynes]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 21:53:56 -0500, Gerald Evenden
> <gerald.evenden at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
>>The kernel is a little nasty but the adaptive integration procedure in
>>gsl
>>(Gnu Scientific Library) handles it nicely.
>>
>>The problem is this: a libproj4 implementation would most easily be
>>performed
>>by using the gsl routine by linking to the gsl library.  Extracting the
>>gsl procedures
>>would be very, very tedious and error prone.  But by linking to the gsl
>>library
>>transportation is compromised and/or complicated---especially in
>>non-unix
>>environments.
> 
> 
> Gerald,
> 
> My take would be that you link to the gsl library but that a
> method be preserved to build without gsl. Hopefully this will
> only mean the removal of the new projections built on it.
> 
> Best regards,

Including code in proj that automatically changes the licensing from
MIT to GPL may not be a good idea. It will discourage a large
part of the community from using proj. Even if commercial SW could still
use the "old" LGPL proj version, the switch will inevitably lead to
incompatibilities between commercial and open SW in the future.
If at all possible, I would prefer keeping proj strict MIT (or LGPL)
so that we can still encourage the use of proj as the standard for both
open and non-free software.

--Frank J. Oynes