[Xastir] Radio frequency question from a simpleton

[James Ewen]

On 7/19/07, Curt, WE7U <archer at eskimo.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Jul 2007, Jason Winningham wrote:
>
> >
> > On Jul 19, 2007, at 2:20 PM, James Ewen wrote:
> >
> > > Plus APRS is available for no fee to the amateur radio community, but
> > > you need to talk to Bob Bruninga about licensing it for commercial
> > > use.
> >
> > I thought that was for the application APRS-DOS, not the protocol
> > itself?
>
> That's my take on it too Jason.

>From :

http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/APRS-docs/COMMERCL.TXT

COPYRIGHT 1993,94,95,96,97:  The APRS formats originated for use in the
amateur radio service.  Anyone is encouraged to apply the APRS formats in
the TRANSMISSION of position, weather, and status packets.  However, the
author reserves the ownership of these protocols for exclusive commercial
application and for all reception and plotting applications.  Other
software engineers desiring to include APRS RECEPTION in their software
for sale within or outside of the amateur community will require a license
from the author.  (very reasonably priced)


The wording is poor, but the intent is pretty clear... Bob reserves
ownership of the protocol for commercial use. Not just the program he
wrote to encode/decode the protocol, but the actual APRS protocol.

Does Xastir get around the license for reception because the software
is not for sale, or did someone purchase a license? I would guess that
if Xastir purchased a license somewhere along the way, that it would
probably go against the GPL license...

Uh-oh... sounds like the lid just popped off a can of worms.

James
VE6SRV