distribution of flycapture SDK

[wjwwood]

Currently, the pointgrey_camera_driver package will download the flycapture SDK if it is not found:

pointgrey_camera_driver/pointgrey_camera_driver/CMakeLists.txt

Lines 18 to 22 in 6c3e4cb

	# If flycapture is already present, use the found version. If not, download it.
	# We can't resolve this dependency using the usual rosdep means because
	# the Point Grey EULA prohibits redistributing the headers or the packages which
	# contains them. We work around this by downloading the archive directly from
	# their website during this step in the build process.

This should be ok, so long as you're not circumventing some registration or EULA acceptance mechanism on behalf of the user. Do any of the maintainers know about this?

However, their SDK license agreement (https://www.ptgrey.com/support/downloads/10419) says:

For clarity, headers (.h), source (.c, .cpp,.cs and .vb) and statically linked libraries (.lib and .a) cannot be redistributed;

Right now, when building the .deb for this package, it downloads the SDK, builds against it, and installs it. The result is uploaded to our http://repositories.ros.org/ where it is then re-distributed. See the contents of the .deb in Kinetic:

% dpkg -L ros-kinetic-pointgrey-camera-driver | grep fly
/opt/ros/kinetic/lib/libflycapture.so.2

Do you guys have special permission to do this? Based on the comments in the CMakeLists.txt, I'd say you probably do not, but maybe I missed some other way it works.

If not, I think we should consider removing this package from the ROS build farm, unless we either find a new way to distribute the binary so that the SDK pieces are not part of it (the user would need to install them some how after installing our deb) or we get special permission from Pointgrey to do this.

@mikepurvis CC'ing you directly since you're listed as the maintainer of the driver package.

[wjwwood]

Reading this again, it's possible that shared libraries are allowed to be redistributed? The line I quoted explicitly does not mention dynamically linked libraries, but I'm not sure if that's intentional or an oversight on their side.

[wjwwood]

Actually, reading just a little bit more I can answer my own question 😛. It's mentioned in the CMakeLists.txt here:

pointgrey_camera_driver/pointgrey_camera_driver/CMakeLists.txt

Lines 98 to 100 in 6c3e4cb

	# Redistributing the flycapture .so file is permitted by the SDK EULA:
	# http://www.ptgrey.com/support/kb/data/PGR-FlyCap-SDK-LA.pdf
	install(FILES ${POINTGREY_LIB} DESTINATION ${CATKIN_PACKAGE_LIB_DESTINATION})

And the previous line in the license agreement (again here: https://www.ptgrey.com/support/downloads/10419) allows for drivers, shared libraries, executables, and documentation to be redistributed in support of derivative products:

(b) may only redistribute drivers (.inf and .sys), dynamically linked libraries (.dlls and .so), executables (.exe) and documentation (.doc, .txt, .pdf and .chm) and only to the extent necessary to support your Derivative Products.

So we're ok. Sorry for the noise 😄. Maybe this will help others wondering about the same thing.