Components distributed via the BIG-EPFL update site were developed by the Biomedical Imaging Group (BIG) at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).
List of BIG components
The following components are expressly or implicitly licensed according to the GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3):
| Project | License text |
|---|---|
| Differentials | GPLv3+ |
| Extended Depth of Field | Proprietary |
| imageware | Implicit |
| MIJ | Proprietary |
| MosaicJ | GPLv3+ |
| PointPicker | Implicit |
| Shepp-Logan Phantom | GPLv3+ |
| Snakuscule | GPLv3+ |
| StackReg | GPLv3+ |
| TurboReg | GPLv3+ |
| UnwarpJ | Proprietary |
| wavelets | Implicit |
Note that components above labeled “proprietary” currently still have old non-open-source license terms on their respective websites, but the copyright holders have expressed their intent to open-source them; see below for details.
Transition to open-source licensing
Until April 2023, these components were licensed under proprietary terms, incompatible with the GPL and similar licenses, with Fiji having been granted special permission to redistribute them:
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:58:20 +0200
From: Michael Unser[…] we are happy that Fiji distributes our software: you have my formal authorization for this (in my quality of lab chief). “You’ll be free to use this software for research purposes, but you must not transmit and distribute it without our consent”: this means that from now on, you are authorized to distribute any ImageJ pluging listed at https://bigwww.epfl.ch/algorithms.html since you have our consent.
Fortunately, the plugins have since been updated to use an open-source license: the GPLv3:
Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2023 10:54:54 +0000 From: Michaël Unser
Subject: BIG’s plugins for FIJI / licenses[…] I am pleased to confirm that all of our software are open-source, in line with the FAIR principles promoted by EPFL. Our licensing follows the GPLv3 and we are currently updating our terms to reflect this.
In addition, we also strongly encourage users to properly cite our research papers in any publications that make use of our software.
