[Plib-devel] Licensing for Console Applications.

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

In recent months, I've had several requests from people who are
writing applications for Games Consoles to change the PLIB
license from L-GPL to (say) the Xfree license.

Normally, I'd just turn license change requests down flat - but
in the case of a games console, the LGPL license is truly impossible
for these people to adhere to.

LGPL requires two things that console software can't meet:

1) The requirement that the end-user be able to re-link
   the application against a newer version of the library
   at some unspecified time in the future.

2) The requirement that all changes and enhancements to the
   library be offered back into the public domain.

Clearly (1) is impossible since there are no compilers or
linkers that the end user can get a hold of - and in any
case, the media space is limited - and very likely, companies
like Sony and Nintendo would take a dim view of releasing
the binaries of their libraries to the big wide world.

It *might* be possible to meet the letter of the license in
this case - but the spirit behind LGPL is really meaningless
in a console situation.

Requirement (2) is also impossible in many cases because
the underlying operating system won't be running standard
graphic library API's (although N64 has a kind of OpenGL
macro library - and I'm told that there is an OpenGL-like
API for PS2).

That means that modifications *MUST* be made to PLIB in
order for it to work with console systems...but those
modifications are *useless* for general purpose computers
and will almost certainly contain calls to API's that
are only released under NDA.

So, the question is:

 * Should we change PLIB's license to help out these people?

There are some subtle issues here:

1) PLIB has had contributions from many people - all of whom
   have to agree. (Well - at the very least, we have to make
   an effort to contact those people to get permission).

2) Do we want to change the license *only* for console apps
   or should we simply give up and go to something like Xfree's
   license for everything?  (I'm not really keen on that idea)

3) Is there a better choice than Xfree's license?  I'd quite
   like to retain some kind of a clause that says that users
   of PLIB are required to offer enhancements back to the
   OpenSource community *UNLESS* those changes are solely for
   the purpose of porting to an inherently closed architecture
   machine like an embedded processor or a game console.

   If a console application writer were to make (say) a nicer
   PUI widget, I'd want that code to return to the public
   version of PUI - but if he merely changed some OpenGL code
   to plug into a proprietary rendering API, I could care less
   about getting that change back...it would be more trouble
   that it's worth to 99% of PLIB users.

So - what does everyone think?   I'm open to suggestions -
especially from people who've actually contributed code.

BTW: Some people are using the very earliest versions
of the PLIB component libraries. These were posted to
my web site without any kind of formal license before
I grouped them all together to form the PLIB package -
which was when I placed it all under LGPL.

There have been at least three requests from various
console/embedded applications writers - and so far I've
had to disappoint them.

-- 
Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
sjb...@ai... (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
sj...@ht...      (work)