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Date: Mon, 05 May 2008 08:02:56 -0700
From: Rick Hillegas <Richard.Hillegas@Sun.COM>
Subject: Re: Spatial Functionality
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Peter Yuill wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I responded to a recent post on the derby-user list on this topic. I am
> working on a project to add spatial functionality to Derby through user
> created tables and procedures. I am interested in taking the next step
> and looking at incorporating spatial functionality in Derby.
>
> The biggest issue I see is one of licensing. The concept of 'spatial
> datatypes' might seem simple enough, but there is no real point without
> spatial functions to go with them. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
> http://www.opengeospatial.org published a standard set of these, and
> there are a handful of high grade open source implementations. There is
> a huge amount of work in these implementations, and they rely on very
> specialized expertise. In the Java world there is just one that has
> stood the test of time, the JTS Topology Suite
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/jts-topo-suite/ . However JTS is LGPL,
> and the prospect of re-engineering the functionality just to get an
> Apache 2.0 license is mind boggling. Even worse, two of the OGC spatial
> filters (Distance Within and Beyond) require Coordinate Reference System
> (CRS) transformation if the database features are stored in a geographic
> CRS. The obvious choice for that functionality is Geotools
> http://geotools.codehaus.org/ , again LGPL. The Apache web site
> indicates there are unresolved questions about the compatibility of
> Apache 2.0 and GPL. Does anyone have more information on the status of
> LGPL?
>   
Hi Peter,

Thanks for working on this valuable contribution. We can ask the 
legal-discuss list for advice about the licensing issues. Do you know 
which version of the LGPL is used by the geospatial work? A quick glance 
at the Geo Tools website indicated LGPL without specifying which 
version. There are apparently two versions (2.1 and 3) according to the 
Free Software Foundation: 
http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/index_html#LGPL

Thanks,
-Rick
> One alternative is to take the route that MySQL went. Leave out all the
> secondary filtering and just support Minimum Bounding Rectangle (MBR)
> queries. However the same question keeps surfacing on the MySQL spatial
> list with monotonous regularity: when will MySQL get 'real' spatial
> functionality. Personally I think a user-space solution is preferable to
> a half-way solution like MySQL.
>
> Regards,
> Peter
>