Editing Panorama Tools (section)

==History==
Dersch started development on Panorama Tools in 1998, producing software available for creating panoramas and more, but had to stop development in 2001 due to legal harassment and claims of [[patent infringement]] by the company [[IPIX]].<ref>{{cite web | url=http://wiki.ffii.org/SwxaiIpixEn | title=iPIX vs. Dersch: German Mathematician silenced by US patent | publisher=Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure}}</ref> Dersch released the core library (pano12) and some of the programs of Panorama Tools under the terms of the [[GNU General Public License]]. The rest of the applications were made available as [[Binary file|binary]] executables only and for free without a copyleft license.{{Citation needed|date=February 2023}}

The development of the source code of Panorama Tools was continued by some members of the original Panorama Tools mailing list. In December 2003 they initiated a [[free software]] project which is currently hosted by [[SourceForge]]. SourceForge requires that all hosted software is released under an [[open source license]]. For this reason Dersch's unlicensed binaries are not hosted there, although they can still be found on mirror websites.

On 5 August 2007, Dersch announced his intention to [[Software relicensing|relicense]] the Panorama Tools source code.<ref name="relicense">{{cite web|url=http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PanoToolsNG/message/11850|title=Panorama Tools License|accessdate=2007-08-10|last=Dersch|first=Helmut|date=2007-08-05|publisher=www.panotools.org |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110519105130/http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/PanoToolsNG/auth?check=G&done=http%3A%2F%2Ftech%2Egroups%2Eyahoo%2Ecom%2Fgroup%2FPanoToolsNG%2Fmessage%2F11850|archivedate=2011-05-19}} [http://www.panotools.org/mailarchive/msg/57813 Alt URL]</ref> On 9 August 2007, Dersch changed the license to a [[GNU Lesser General Public License]].<ref name="DerschRelicenseQuote">{{cite web|url=http://webuser.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/|title=Panorama Tools License Change|accessdate=2007-08-10|last=Dersch|first=Helmut|date=2007-08-09|publisher=self published|quote=The license to the Panorama Tools library (pano12.dll, pano12.lib, pano12.so, etc) used by several image processing utilities is changed from this license to the GNU Lesser General Public License. This change is in effect from today (August 9, 2007).}}</ref>