[ros-kernel] Floodfill

[Mike Nordell]

Martin Fuchs wrote:

> http://www.codeproject.com/gdi/QuickFill.asp
>
> It's able to do fills in all modes required by ExtFloodFill(), so it
should
> not be a big problem to use it in ROS. The license of Codeproject code
> is PD, so there should also be no license issues.

While the license of the CodeProject code, the code that runs the site,
might be public domain (I wouldn't know, I never looked at it), it's also
completely irellevant in this case. Worse, it's even 100% misleading.

Code published by authors on CodeProject is released under whatever license
the author used.

The specific code in question (QuickFill\QuickFill.cpp) contains:
"Copyright (C) 2004 John R. Shaw
All rights reserved.

This code may be used in compiled form in any way you desire. This
file may be redistributed unmodified by any means PROVIDING it is
not sold for profit without the authors written consent, and
providing that this notice and the authors name is included."

This makes it explicitly incompatible with the GNU GPL.
You are not allowed to distribute a modified version (which obviously would
be required to make it usable in ROS), and you can't even make a dime if you
sell CD's containing ROS source code in the future. I'd expect any CD
containing a binary installation of ROS to also come with the source code on
the very same CD.

This license seems to be more compelling to proprietary vendors, while
(intentionally?) alienating free software.

/Mike