Alpha-expansion, alpha-beta swaps and patents

[Stéfan van der Walt]

Hi Andy

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Andreas Müller
<amueller at ais.uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> To restart a conversation we had before on SIFT:
> Do we want patented algorithms in sklearn?

While there's nothing stopping us from implementing patented
algorithms, I do not like the implications.  It means we have to start
advertising to users that there are specific functions that they
cannot use without carefully examining the conditions.  I'd much
prefer for the whole package to be freely usable.

I get very unhappy when I see patents on algorithms such as SIFT,
built on top of (or at least inspired by) an entire volume of
non-patented research.  Fortunately, there are often
work-arounds--e.g., I believe the STAR (CenSurE) features used in
OpenCV (BSD-licensed!) are not patented, and work as well as or better
than SIFT.  So I suggest we implement that instead:

http://pr.willowgarage.com/wiki/Star_Detector

Stéfan