ICC profiles and open licensing

[Kai-Uwe Behrmann]

Hello OSI list readers,

the ICC website features not only the open colour space file format 
standard, which is implemented and as such widely distributed on Linux and 
BSD systems, but as well a according ICC profile registration [1]. The 
intention of the used license is very close to what open source projects 
need in order to bundle the provided profiles. However the actual used 
license on the above mentioned site is not completely OSI compatible.

Would following license satisfy the OSI definition in order to accept ICC 
profile bundles for any open source OS distribution (?):

"This profile is made available by [profile provider], with permission of
[profile vendor], and may be used, embedded, exchanged, and shared without
restriction. Altered versions of this profile shall have the original
identification and copyright information removed and shall not be
misrepresented as the original profile."

Note the last sentence was altered to satisfy 
http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor


The reason why ICC needs a own license is to have a compact as possible 
text. Even the libz/libpng license, my personal favourite, is not 
acceptable. The license shall as well put as few as possible restrictions 
on the usage of the profiles to get them wide spread and used.

The new second sentence shall enshure that modified profiles are not 
confused as the original ones registred at www.color.org but render 
colours different. Such misused profiles could damage the trust in 
the profile registry.


kind regards
Kai-Uwe Behrmann
-- 
developing for colour management 
www.behrmann.name + www.oyranos.org



[1] http://www.color.org/registry/profileregistration.xalter