Free Flight, Free Speech

https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=29731

2.4 The Viral Nature of the GPL

If an author A licenses a copy of their work under the GPL to a second person B, then (as discussed above) B receives a license to make and distribute 'derivative works', along with the obligation to license the 'derivative works' under the GPL.

If the 'derivative work' is a modification of the original work (e.g. the same aircraft with additional refinements), it is quite obvious that the modified aircraft must be distributed under the GPL, or not distributed at all.

However, this clause also applies when the 'derivative work' is something entirely different. Suppose author B creates an entirely different and unrelated aircraft but copies, modifies and reuses the autopilot, checklists and a few cockpit instruments from the first aircraft, into the second aircraft. This makes the second aircraft a 'derivative work' of the first aircraft and forces author B to distribute the second aircraft under the GPL. It is said that the GPL of the autopilot, checklists and instruments of the first aircraft has 'infected' the second aircraft and made the entire second aircraft GPL'd. This is seen as a Good Thing by the Free Software Foundation, which would like for everything to be GPL'd, and as a Bad Thing by people who would like to use any license other than the GPL.

Frankly I think of all the things writen in the now deleted topic my premise that this opens up a can of worms with regards ALL planes within every 3rd party repository was the most damning and scariest.

It's my belief that every plane contains at least 10% of code that has been copied from existing work... In fact this has been the advised method of creating new work within flightgear... On many occations I've read the advise being to simple copy a similair plane added the new 3d files and texture and adapt it's animation and flight model xml files.. There are no template files, no blank planes in which to start a new project and as such this amounts to a GPL 'trap' by those in charge of flightgear as all planes are derivative in one way or another.

One of the other issues is the differing treatment of FGmembers versas other 3rd party repositories by core flightgear, their attitude is not consistent, it can be shown to be a colaborated and systematic series of attacks upon FGMembers. When a GPL challenge is initiated towards FGmembers content by an author, more than likely egged on by core flightgear. If the same challenge or similiar challenges weren't issued to ALL 3rd party repositories with regards the viral infection of GPL content then upon entering the courts the judge would not doubt view this as a vendetta towards FGMembers.

It might be that this has no reflection on the outcome with regards FGMembers, however it most definately would have dragged every other 3rd party repository into a similiar court action, as GPL licence does not allow the author to be choosy as to who can and cannot break it's rules..it would not be in GNU's best interest to allow that to stand.

AS it's said...." I think that boats well and truely sailed"

you have it all correct there, Bomber.

Really, it is not a question anymore who is the hostile group here.
Certain personalities, in the name of "FlightGear core" had been dragging their group and the rest of the community through the mud; and as you concluded at the end, since you can't really be "choosy" when it comes to GPL, they are standing on very shaky ground.

Ultimately, It is my opinion their goal is not to settle into court action, but just to spread misinformation and fear to limit the number of users taking full advantage of FGMEMBERS infrastructure. Most people would not let themselves be dissuaded with such childish behavior, but I feel sorry for the few that are.

Best,
IH-COL

I look at it this way;

- First of all, anyone who wishes to create any code that they care about needs to understand licensing. If you don't care, then whatever. But if you do care about what happens to what you've created, then you need to understand it. It's really no different than any other product subject to ownership. We can like that or not, but we live in a capitalist society with ownership legislation that includes pretty much everything and definitely intellectual property. The GPL license is what it is regardless of FG, so it all is what it is.

- FG has chosen GPL for the official repos. So that is what it is as well. It becomes a political issue and you can't change it without getting on the inside of things. You won't get there though the way things stand right now, so you can pretty much give up the "direct" fight that FG would choose to accept anything other than GPL-only.

- Since both of the above are the case, there's therefore no option than to stick to slapping a GPL license on everything that contains GPL material. So as I said in the first point anyone who does NOT want GPL needs to get rid of anything GPL in their code. Obviously new code can be written than accomplishes the same thing. And as soon as that's done the problem is solved. Then a different license can be used.

- Nobody's going to court over this, so there's no sense losing sleep over this GPL "issue" at all.

I think it'd be interesting to see though if any other 3rd party repos contain planes with GPL content without having that license. It'd be interesting to see and interesting to see FG react to it if it became public knowledge.

It's only true IF the viral nature of GPL is allowed to stand and not be challenged...

The spirit of the GPL licence was quite clear in that if I take your programming code and improve it, you (and anyone) should have equal rights to have access to my improvements and add more improvements... the definition of a virtuous circle of improvement. The licence is clearly aimed at those people that take others programming code and having improved it, then attempt to withhold the improvements from the original author(s).

What it was not aimed at was people taking GPL programming code and using it within their product and having to licence the whole of their product as GPL.. ALL they have to do is allow access to the GPL programming code, allowing the orginal author(s) sight of any improvements.

What it was NEVER EVER intended for was as Thorsten puts it allow him access to 3d models that have no relationship what-so-ever to any GPL programming code that existed within the folder structure that the 3d model is now being distributed in.
The placement of a GPL 3d model within a folder structure does not give anyone the right to change the copyright (against the authors wishes) of any 3d or 2d work for that matter subsequently added to that folder.....

This is just scaremongering lies...

but if you believe it's not lies... then ALL flightgear planes in any 3rd party respository are now GPL...

It's either one or the other.

And members of 3rd party repositories need to stand up and say " this is not what we signed up for when we started creating content for flightgear"

Do not attempt to silently, via PM's or emails come to some arrangement with the core members of flightgear, for them to tread softly with you on the understanding that you'll not rock the boat.... because as I said in the previous post with regards licencing, flightgear will have to be seen to be treating everyone equally the same for any subsequent legal actions within court to be taken seriously..... or if not seriously to avoid 3rd party repositories being dragged into the mellee.

I believe that a 3d model and a planes FDM have no relationship to each other and that they only exist as data to an interpretor... and as such there's no problems... but if you believe otherwise then we're in for a world of pain... Because Thorstens allready threatened to report FGMembers for GPL violation.

It's only a matter of time, as he won't be able to help himself.

Simon

bomber wrote:
What it was not aimed at was people taking GPL programming code and using it within their product and having to licence the whole of their product as GPL.. ALL they have to do is allow access to the GPL programming code, allowing the orginal author(s) sight of any improvements.

Respect to this, an important read I recommend is:

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

(Note that a LGPL license exist, to partly work around this issue, but also notice the GNU/FSF foundation stand on the issue, on the article linked)

Best,
IH-COL

PS: I fully stand with the conclussion remarks

But we should not listen to these temptations, because we can achieve much more if we stand together. We free software developers should support one another. By releasing libraries that are limited to free software only, we can help each other's free software packages outdo the proprietary alternatives. The whole free software movement will have more popularity, because free software as a whole will stack up better against the competition.

bomber wrote:It's only true IF the viral nature of GPL is allowed to stand and not be challenged...

And who are you going to challenge? The license is almost a decade old and isn't limited to the FG community. Whatever it says in the license applies to anyone who uses it, regardless of whether they're in the FG community or not. So if you successfully "challenge" it and change what it means in practice then that applies to everyone else in any other community using the same license.

I mean, do you really think that's going to happen???

bomber wrote:The spirit of the GPL licence was quite clear in that if I take your programming code and improve it, you (and anyone) should have equal rights to have access to my improvements and add more improvements... the definition of a virtuous circle of improvement. The licence is clearly aimed at those people that take others programming code and having improved it, then attempt to withhold the improvements from the original author(s).

That's not true at all. The original authors have equal rights to access the improvements made by others as those others have rights to access the original author's work. That's obvious if the GPL license follows any derivative.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding you somehow.

bomber wrote:What it was not aimed at was people taking GPL programming code and using it within their product and having to licence the whole of their product as GPL.. ALL they have to do is allow access to the GPL programming code, allowing the orginal author(s) sight of any improvements.

What it was NEVER EVER intended for was as Thorsten puts it allow him access to 3d models that have no relationship what-so-ever to any GPL programming code that existed within the folder structure that the 3d model is now being distributed in.
The placement of a GPL 3d model within a folder structure does not give anyone the right to change the copyright (against the authors wishes) of any 3d or 2d work for that matter subsequently added to that folder.....

Ok, so if I'm understanding you correctly what you are really arguing is how the term "derivative" is applied - or whatever term is actually used in the actual GPL license. So, can you quote the exact section the definition of which you and Thorsten disagree on?

bomber wrote:but if you believe it's not lies... then ALL flightgear planes in any 3rd party respository are now GPL...

i don't think that follows actually......

Lydiot, I asked you a question on FG forum...

Do me the curtesey of answering it before I answer yours

where?

We were having a conversation and you just left.... remember the topic.. it was our last one.

I try and answer every question aimed at me... its not allways easy as sometimes they come from many different people, it's a techneque used on the other forum for out numbering a person and downgrading their opinion.

Just give me a link then. I can't remember where that was.