[MINC-development] minc-tools has non-distributable files in the git tree

Steve M. Robbins steve at sumost.ca
Sun Sep 27 23:12:31 EDT 2015


Hi,

I mistakenly believed that minc-tools was just a subset of the previously 
distributed "minc" tarball.  After uploading to Debian, however, a Debian ftp-
team member indicated that the files in conversion/gcomserver are not 
redistributable.  

In fact, there is a comment in the file stating:

 * Revision 1.16  2001-04-09 23:02:48  neelin
 * Modified copyright notice, removing permission statement since copying,
 * etc. is probably not permitted by our non-disclosure agreement with
 * Philips.

See https://github.com/BIC-MNI/minc-tools/commit/ee456a65b92ca6af39a84e7148602d1ea8e2b8a8

The directory conversion/gcomserver was not present in the original minc 
tarball, so something was added.   Several things, in fact.

Now, gcomserver is not used in the build anywhere.  So I simply stripped out 
that directory and the package still builds fine.  I asked Peter Neelin about 
this and he said it is code for a pre-DICOM Philips format/wire protocol.  
This seems unlikely to be of interest today so I believe the git repo could 
simply be scrubbed with no loss.

Peter also indicated that things like ecattominc and scxtominc were for 
similarly proprietary formats.  Like gcomserver, scxtominc is not  used today 
so presumably could be removed without loss.  The tools ecattominc (and 
minctoecat) on the other hand, are built.  Are they still relevant?  I can see 
Siemens has published a DICOM Conformance Statement about ECAT PET Systems.  
Would dcm2mnc work for ECAT today?

-Steve
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 811 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/pipermail/minc-development/attachments/20150927/cd619ed5/attachment.pgp>


More information about the MINC-development mailing list