Bounty to get Gnash ported to AmigaOS4.1

[Troels_E]

Ultimate goal of this bounty is to get:
a) A standalone Flash player, callable from within scripts, and
b) A webbrowser plugin based on the NetScape plugin API.




The Gnash bounty is meant to help close the gap in webbrowsing experience by bringing Macromedia/Adobe Flash support to AmigaOS4.1.

Ultimate goal of this bounty is to get:
a) A standalone Flash player, callable from within scripts, and
b) A webbrowser plugin based on the NetScape plugin API.

Afxgroup (Andrea Palmatè) has asked to be assigned to the Gnash bounty which was originally proposed by Samo79.
The deadline for this project is 1st March 2010 for both a working standalone player and a working NSAPI plugin.

Amigabounty.net Gnash bounty.
Gnash - Flash Movie Player for AmigaOS4.1

Gnash website.
http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
Developer website for Gnash.
http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnash/

[hooligan]

Honest answer to honest question: Why bother? You are short of Inet ads?

[Tension]

Short of being able to go on Youtube more like!!

[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?

[pVC]

Short of being able to go on Youtube more like!!

But really, there's better way to watch those videos. Gnash is waste of cpu for them, IMHO. Bloated and uses many times more cpu for flv than mplayer for example.

[Linde]

Honestly I think that being able to browse video sites normally would be worth the extra CPU time.

[Hans_]

@Piru

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

Well, OWB's BSD license is already compatible with GPL, so there's no issue there.

As a flash plugin it would be an NSAPI plugin (i.e., the one that Firefox uses). Seeing as IBrowse also uses that API, it may work with IBrowse whether the IBrowse developers agree to it or not. You can't force the developer of a program to open-source their app just because someone else comes along and writes a GPL'd plugin that works with it.

Hans

[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

[Hans_]

@Piru

But no-one is talking about making Gnash an integral part of OWB; it would be a plugin using the Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI). The NPAPI is used by many different browsers, and many different plugins, not all of which are GPL.

If it would make you feel better we could declare the Amiga OS port of OWB to be GPL if and only if a GPL plugin is used with it. The BSD "version" wouldn't need a single line of code to be disabled since they're allowed to use the NPAPI.

Hans

[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.

[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.

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

You do have a point about IBrowse, which is something I didn't even think about when I looked at the bounty requirements. That part of the bounty is incompatible with Gnash's license and should probably be removed. Good luck trying to stop people from using Gnash with IBrowse though.

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

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.

Hans

[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.

[Hans_]

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.

The overall license doesn't have to be changed at all. If OWB is released with Gnash, then these two as one package become GPL as per the licenses of both apps; if OWB is downloaded on its own, it can be left as BSD. There is no reason why OWB's license has to be completely transformed. This is the way that the GPL FAQ explains it.

BTW, what's your position on Gnash using GStreamer to get around codec Patenting issues? They basically say that if Gnash is compiled with ffmpeg then you're responsible for complying with Patented material, but if you use GStreamer, then it's up to the user to pick the codecs that they use, so it's no longer your problem. That sounds just as "dubious" as anything else that you're complaining about. Or is it somehow okay, because it's a corporation that owns the IP that's being worked around?

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).

The avcodec port is maintained by someone else, not the DvPlayer author, and it is the avcodec author who enabled the switch. It is perfectly understandable that the DvPlayer author didn't realize that the inclusion of liba52 made it GPL.

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.

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

I'm pretty sure that I've seen at least one open-source project pull access to their code/binaries until they had rewritten everything to comply with the licenses of code that was used. That's a perfectly acceptable response to discovering that you're not complying with licenses of sub-components.

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).

Well, now that you've made everyone aware of this, the right thing to do, IMHO, would be to remove the IBrowse compatibility from the bounty. The OWB requirement can stay because there are no licensing issues with OWB.

Hans

[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.

[Troels_E]

Mention of IBrowse removed from the Gnash bounty page. Thanks for the notice.