Re: [Flightgear-devel] can i distribute my airplane as a shared library, and what legislation issues would that ensue?

[Curtis O. <cur...@fl...>]

Hi Hamza,

Another thing to consider is that distributing your aircraft as a .dll or
.so doesn't hide or obfuscate your code and textures after they have been
loaded into the simulator structures for rendering.  The rest of FlightGear
is open-source so it wouldn't take much effort to insert an OSG function
call to save out the aircraft (models and textures) in some other common 3d
format.  There would be some loss in terms of the organization of the
source files, but even so, it would give someone who's intention is to copy
or modify the work a place to start.  All the xml config should be there
for free in the property tree. The licensing of nasal (I believe) is
written in a way that makes it difficult to distribute proprietary nasal
code.  So there would be some really significant challenges to making a
FlightGear aircraft that is secure from modification, not to mention
copying.

Best regards,

Curt.

On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 6:04 AM Thorsten Renk <
tho...@sc...> wrote:

>
> > want to keep my work close and have it so i can make derivatives to it
> > for other sims too commercially.
>
> You own copyright of your work even if you license it GPL, and you may
> develop your work further and release a more complete version under a
> commercial license if you like (that's a variant of dual licensing). The
> only way to not retain copyright of what you do is to transfer it to
> someone else or to relinquish it by releasing your work into public domain.
>
> If you create a 3d model for a FG aircraft and license it GPL, nobody
> prevents you from adapting and selling it for X-plane. In fact, you can
> sell it also for FG (but others may re-distribute it as they like once
> they buy it since it is GPL, so it may not be a too viable business model)
>
> > it will help people in both sides of the aisle, one's who make aircraft
> > for months/years at a time(rather than the placeholder aircraft that we
> > have on FGAddon right not that wouldn't improve in 10 years), but would
> > also allow the author of the fork the privilege to gain from it
> > financially, elsewhere.
>
> If you want to sell an aircraft, it'd be unwise to start from the 5% a
> placeholder version will give you, you should start from scratch to be
> legally safe.
>
> > What about this idea, think about.(I think the Su-15 as example, perfect
> > illustration of what a professional caliber airplane could be, could
> > benefited from this somewhat, sorry Vitos) it deserves more than FG
> > abandonment.
>
> Vitos is free to license the aircraft GPL and put it into the FGAddon
> repository (in fact, to the degree that he is using canvas, I think he's
> likely be caught by the viral GPL nature and not actually free to license
> the whole package non-GPL). The aircraft isn't abandoned, but FG is a GPL
> project and the aircraft is not.
>
> > i think we should all apologize(me included) to Vitos and include his
> > plane in FGAddon, if he loosens up on the licensee, as opposed to other
> > hangars inviting him whom they don't know better than to establish a
> > relationship that's based on acquiring the latests and greatest candy
> > without any gentleman's agreement.
>
> For what specifically? For pointing out that he isn't the only one who
> ever did damage modeling in FG as he claimed? For naming the long list of
> people contributing to making space flight in FG possible before he made
> Vostok-1? For not coding Earthview as he thinks it ought to be done? For
> disagreeing with him that vertices rather than textures and normal maps
> should be used to render small details for performance reasons?
>
> I'm completely willing to apologize to anyone for anything I did wrong.
> What is it you think I did wrong here (and what is it you think you did
> wrong)?
>
> Otherwise I'm with Ludovic - why should I spend my time (for free)
> enabling someone else to make money more easily? As far as FG is
> concerned, if it's not GPL, I'm not interested, no matter how good it may
> be.
>
> Cheers,
>
> * Thorsten
>
>
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