Bounty to get Gnash ported to AmigaOS4.1

[Piru]

"Gnash is GPL2'd, and the Free Software Foundation has the copyright," GNU Gnash maintainer Rob Savoye told internetnews.com. "So the standalone player can be used by anyone, but the Flash player code can only be used by other free software projects under the terms of the GPL."

It's GPLv3 these days, but that's beside the point.

Who is going to change OWB and IBrowse license to (L)GPL?

[Piru]

@Hans_

OWB is licensed under BSD license, unless specified otherwise in WebCore/JSCore code where the original licenses apply (APSL, LGPL and BSD).

http://www.sand-labs.org/owb

Code licensed under a permissive free software license, such as the BSD license, can be incorporated into copylefted (e.g. GPL'd) projects. Such code is thus "GPL-compatible". There is no need to secure the consent of the original authors. In contrast, code under the GPL cannot be relicensed under the BSD license without securing the consent of all copyright holders. Thus the two licenses are compatible, but the combination as a whole must be distributed under the terms of the GPL, not the permissive license.

Existing free software BSDs tend to avoid including software licensed under the GPL in the core operating system, or the base system, except as a last resort when alternatives are non-existent or vastly less capable, such as with GCC. The OpenBSD project has acted to remove GPL-licensed tools in favor of BSD-licensed alternatives, some newly written and some adapted from older code.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_licence

[Piru]

@Hans_

But no-one is talking about making Gnash an integral part of OWB; it would be a plugin using the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI).

GPL is clear about dynamic linking, anything linking to the GPL project (statically or dynamically) must be GPL compatible. As the authors state Gnash should only be used with GPL compatible apps.

Using plugin API to circumvate this is IMHO dubious at best. It is very clear that the intent of this thing is to use it with OWB and IBrowse, both GPL incompatible projects.

Much like "external" liba52-plugin for DVplayer is obviously there to circumvent GPL.

It seems to be that much of the amiga community has no regard for licenses.

If it would make you feel better we could declare the Amiga OS port of OWB to be GPL

That'd solve the problem for OWB.

[Piru]

@Hans_

The BSD license is GPL compatible, at least the one used in OWB is; look it up. OWB is GPL compatible.

But still, as far as I know the licensing would need to be changed for that, which would be kind of icky to maintain. But I guess that wouldn't be that much of a burden.

Good luck trying to stop people from using Gnash with IBrowse though.

Yeah well, there's no way to stop them really, as DvPlayer has shown.

It's not a plugin for DvPlayer; it's a plugin for avcodec. DvPlayer uses the avcodec library on the assumption that it is LGPL, as the avcodec project itself specifies. There's a reason why the liba52 plugin isn't distributed with DvPlayer. You can't point the finger at the author of DvPlayer with this one since he developed it with the (correct) understanding that avcodec is LGPL.

Older DvPlayer specifically listed AC3 sound support as a feature of DvPlayer. In order to compile libavcodec with liba52 built-in, you must pass GPL switch to configure. So yes, I can point the finger at the DvPlayer author and I do (ignorance is no excuse).

"2.3 Features
[...]
DvPlayer supports many audio and video codecs via avcodec.library,
including MPEG 1/2, DiVX, XVID, MJPG, Cinepak, Indeo Video, PCM, MP2,
MP3, AC3 (stereo, 5.1) and more..."

"2.2 Requirements
[...]
avcodec.library 51.34 or newer is also required. This library is available
for download on the DvPlayer web page."

"3. Installation
[...]
DvPlayer requires avcodec.library 51.34 or higher. You must download and
install it also. It can be downloaded from the DvPlayer webpage."

My requests for the source code were ignored.

Instead the liba52 was separated to a "plugin" which the users must install for full functionality.

Doing this rather than complying with the request for the source code is dubious.

I hope something similar won't happen with Gnash. The best situation would be that the bounty would be updated so that the author is mandated to state the licensing clearly in the final releases (perhaps the plugin should display a message displaying the GPL license at first invocation or so).

Personally I find it somewhat unfortunate that Gnash is GPL. If it was LGPL it would be much easier to use it as a plugin.

[Piru]

@Hans_

Come on, you knew that the DvPlayer author had overlooked the fact that an avcodec with liba52 included made it GPL, and you seeked to use this in order to get your hands on the source-code.

So? According to GPL they should have complied.

What he did was rectify the mistake that he made by recalling the product, and rereleasing it with an LGPL avcodec library. In doing so, he did not have to comply with your request, and there is nothing dubious about it.

I have the binaries I requested the source code for. According to GPL the source for these should be provided, regardless why or how the GPL code got into them.

He's not responsible for the liba52 plugin for avcodec (which is a separate product), and he doesn't distribute it with DvPlayer.

Come on, you perfectly well know that Chip and COBRA are very close friends and they co-ordinated this switch just to circumvent GPL. It is a disgrace.

[Piru]

@Hans_

The alternative actions that they took were legal, and a perfectly acceptable response. He complied with GPL by recalling, rectifying the license violation, and re-releasing it.

Yes, this prevents any further violations, at least directly.

But, it is not legal alternative to providing the source code for existing, previous releases.

We obviously are in disagreement about the issue. I just conclude this discussion by observing that A) I was never provided the source code as required by the license B) the liba52 was put back via a plugin. IMO that reveals the true motives (GPL circumvention).

[Piru]

Does GPL include code, such as MEL scripts for Maya? I've found tons on sites that I use on a daily basis, but many of them say you can't use them for commercial jobs, yet we all do, but none of them ever list any sort of licensing. Am I to assume that using scripts such as MEL and ActionScripts in Flash fall in the same category?

The scripts have their own licensing. When someone creates their own scripts they automagically gain copyright on them. If there is no license copyright applies directly and only the author can decide about the distribution. If the particular script doesn't have any license or it isn't placed in public domain, then you can't use them without permission. Note that while very limited, stating that a script is free to use for non-commercial uses can be considered a valid license.

Only if the script is clearly designated (L)GPL it is that.

So to protect your own work you're not required to do anything specific, all work is automagically covered by copyright already. That obviously doesn't prevent anyone from abusing your work anyway. If that happens it's upto you to sue the {bleep} (if you care enough).

GPL doesn't protect your work any better than copyright already does, it in fact only gives more freedom. GPL isn't always the best choice. It can lead into some undesired side-effects (as seen with plugins for example).

So, if you wish to give other users some rights, while still making sure that you retain yours, I would suggest you to look into http://creativecommons.org/license/

The Creative Commons licenses are rather nice, and they at least aren't infectious. :-)

There are tons more licenses around, too, but I've found CC quite useful for many things.