OSIRIX END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT (circa March 2015) And like Horos, the son of the mythical Egyptian God Osiris, who was born from parts of Osiris’s body, Horos will continue to perpetuate the legacy of what once was the world’s most popular medical image viewing software.īelow is the actual license agreement that Pixmeo requires for users of OsiriX Lite. Horos will grow and thrive from community contributions. Horos will solicit, rather than inhibit, community involvement. No matter what the result of this change in direction for Pixmeo, the OsiriX open source code will continue to live free and open in the Horos Project. Where did the money contributed to the foundation and any code contributions go? Certainly Pixmeo paraded under the banner of open source and touted the value of community involvement. While OsiriX was an open source project for most of a decade (originally released under a GPL license and lately under a LGPL – coincidental with the incorporation of the commercial entity) and Pixmeo certainly took significant funding for its foundation from unsuspecting partners (ostensibly to further the open source version), one would guess that there was at least some small public contribution to the code. The OsiriX Foundation is (was?) OsiriX’s commitment to the open source community and where they solicited community submissions. Pixmeo certainly can’t control the submissions of code from the community. It’s a whole other question as to whether they can after-the-fact control what has already been shared with the open source community. Pixmeo has the right to do whatever it wants to the license of the new code that they developed. We don’t believe that is what open source is really about!Ĭan Pixmeo take an open source project and close it? By cloaking themselves in the open source movement, they were able to effectively market their product. We’re not sure Pixmeo ever really believed in open source. But since version 5.9 no source code has been made available to the community. Open source requires you place the source code into the community.They are available now only in the paid version. But newer versions of OsiriX have features and functions removed. Open source does not permit the removal of prior open source features.But Pixmeo now restricts your ability to redistribute its software. Open source software may always be redistributed free from restrictions. But Pixmeo now restricts your ability to modify OsiriX per their license agreement. Open source software may always be modified by the user.But Pixmeo has always charged for theirs and doesn’t permit redistribution. Open source software manuals must be free.But Pixmeo has singled out certain individuals and companies and disabled their access to download OsiriX. The authors of the open source software are not permitted to restrict access to anyone – even bad guys. Open source software is supposed to be free and open.To avail yourself of the goodwill of the open source community, you are expected to behave accordingly. Is Pixmeo living up to its open source commitment?Ĭompanies who utilize open source licensing agree to a set of precepts by which they are expected to operate. The obvious nagging screens had been pointing us all that direction. What Pixmeo has now done officially, is what it had been doing in effect with its last three versions - delivering a free-use but reduced-function version of its product as an inducement to upgrade to its paid MD product. According to its new license agreement (reprinted below and notably flawed in its legal construction), while you can use the OsiriX Lite version that Pixmeo provides for download without charge, you are no longer permitted to modify, copy or distribute the OsiriX program. What that means to OsiriX users worldwide is that OsiriX is no longer part of the open source community. On Friday the 13 th (interpret the date as you wish) of March 2015, Pixmeo SARL released Version 6.5 of OsiriX, this time without opening the product to the community under an open source license. Our industry just passed an unfortunate but significant milestone in the world of medical image viewing. When OsiriX moves from open to closed source, what does that mean for users?
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