Thank you for the feedback Bruno. Yes, the SIFT patent expired in March of 2020. So there are no longer those issues present that I know of. The original autopano-sift was released at GPL2 if I recall correctly, so it stands to reason that autopano-sift-c would as well. I would have to look into this to verify, but it may be a mute point.
I do not have an issue with cpfind instead of autopano-sift-c, and will look into some of that as well Out of curiosity, what do you consider an "exotic" dependency? EBo -- On Thu, Oct 14, 2021 at 10:37 AM Bruno Postle <[email protected]> wrote: > I think autopano-sift-c is maintainable, it doesn't have any awkward > dependencies, and as far as I know still builds on all platforms despite > abandonment. If you want to take it on then please dive-in. > > I'll try and recall some history: > > The C# implementation (which involved running two tools consecutively) was > replaced by the C version that was contributed anonymously, this is the > code that you can find on sourceforge. > > Hugin has never shipped with an autopano-sift-c executable because of a > SIFT algorithm patent (though Hugin has the capability to run > autopano-sift-c for control-point finding if you have it). > > Pablo wrote cpfind as a full replacement that doesn't infringe the SIFT > patent, this *is* shipped with Hugin, and as far as I'm concerned cpfind is > as capable and as fast at feature identification as autopano-sift-c. There > hasn't been much interest in autopano-sift-c since. > > I believe that the SIFT patent expired last year, so there is some value > in looking at all this again - in particular because (as you have > identified) there are some very mature GPU based SIFT implementations in > libraries like opencl. > > So, upgrading autopano-sift-c to use a modern SIFT implementation would be > interesting, but there are two drawbacks: we don't actually know who wrote > it, though they did attach a GPL licence, so it has an odd copyright > status; it also reads a limited range of image file formats, whereas cpfind > can read all the formats supported by Hugin. > > Modifying cpfind in the Hugin project to use a modern SIFT library *could* > produce a dramatic improvement in speed and quality (though nobody knows > without trying), if so, and if it doesn't involve exotic library > dependencies, it would be welcome as part of Hugin. This would be the best > place to do this from my perspective. > > -- > Bruno > > > On 14 October 2021 13:59:01 BST, John David wrote: > >While researching some SIFT, SURF, and ORB implementations and support on > >Gentoo I came across a request for maintenance support > >for autopano-sift-c. I have been in contact with the Gentoo Proxy > >Maintainers about maintaining that and other packages in the portage tree. > > > >While researching background I read that autopano-sift-c is a port of an > >original C# code base, but what is probably less well known is that the > >original C# code (circa 2004) does not appear to be available anymore, > and > >the original developer of the C# code (Sebastian Nowozin) has no > interest > >in maintaining it. Since it is a port of orphaned code I am not sure > that > >maintaining autopano-sift-c is viable in the long term. > > > >I am exploring the following options, I can work with the hugin folks to > >maintain the original autopano-sift-c code, or I can work on modifying > >hugin to use a different library. > > > >For long term support and longevity, porting to use a different library > >would likely be the most maintainable, but before spending a bunch of > time > >on this I would like to know if there would be support from both the > >developers and the community. No reason to waste your time or mine if > that > >is a non-starter. If this is a viable option I would be interested to > hear > >what other libraries that others have used and would interested to see > >supported. At the moment I am looking into OpenCL and OpenCV libraries, > >but am open to anything that is actively maintained and have a chance of > >being so in the long term. > > -- > A list of frequently asked questions is available at: > http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hugin-ptx/B93A609F-C256-404C-9387-FCB284B62875%40postle.net > . > -- A list of frequently asked questions is available at: http://wiki.panotools.org/Hugin_FAQ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "hugin and other free panoramic software" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hugin-ptx/CAAF3RYtV%3D69ZrQKFpR_pqB6XeDmHbaKnc4AU__TQ6F2Rm3eAMA%40mail.gmail.com.
