Ewok rampage

A system called PTAMM (Parallel Tracking and Multiple Mapping) looks interesting, and this type of structure from motion augmented reality is closely related to robotic visual perception systems.  Here is an example:



Unfortunately the license associated with this system makes no sense.

"No part of the Software may be reproduced, modified, transmitted or transferred in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the express permission of Isis"

Ok, so this isn't open source. No wait...

"Isis’s permission is not required if the said reproduction, modification, transmission or transference is done without financial return, the conditions of this Licence are imposed upon the receiver of the product, and all original and amended source code is included in any transmitted product."

So it is kinda open source.  ish.

"You may be held legally responsible for any copyright infringement that is caused or encouraged by your failure to abide by these terms and conditions."

So it's a pseudo-open "throw code over the wall" sort of endeavour, but they can sue you if you make any derivative work which according to them "encourages" financial return.  That's pretty vague.  Any redistributed modification could constitute encouragement to do something or other, dependent upon the prejudices or theories of the observer.  Probably best not to touch this code with a barge pole.

This highlights the perils of "roll your own" software licenses.  In such cases there's a good chance that the language used doesn't make sense, is self-contradictory, or may not actually be legally valid if it came to the crunch.  Probably they would be better off either keeping PTAMM as a closed proprietary system, or else using a standard open source software license which preferably is OSI approved.

Within the academic sphere, of which this could be a part, there might be a gap in the pantheon of licenses for a validation only license.  That is, where the code is open for inspection and independent use, but only specifically for the purposes of checking that particular algorithms described in an academic publication do what it's claimed they should.