I missed a day being offline yesterday, and now I see there's no way I'm
going to be able to read every message in this thread word for word and
catch (and acknowledge) every nuance of every point being made. So let me
just say what I'm thinking, which probably echos the sentiments of the other
long-time developers.
FlightGear is licensed under the terms of the GPL. The GPL isn't perfect in
all situations, but it's well thought out and (I think) does much more good
that harm. And it would be *very* hard to change now at this point anyway.
The FlightGear data repository has always welcomed inclusion of aircraft as
long as developers are willing to be consistent with the rest of the project
and use the GPL. This way we can distribute the package under a consistent
license, developers can borrow code and ideas and models from other
developers without worry about license issues. And there are all the other
good points mentioned by others in this thread.
What I don't want to see is someone's frustration with a technical issue
turn into sweeping policy change. If there is an access/permission problem,
let's fix it. If there is a technical issue let's build something to
address that.
The reason we don't mention or list other aircraft outside the central
repository is not because we don't like their license terms or don't like
them doing something on there own. That would be wildly mistaken. We
absolutely support freedom and support authors developing and releasing
their work however works best for them. Also we recognize that that central
FlightGear repository can't scale to cover every aircraft and variant in the
world. The reason is that there is no central repository of external
aircraft and no way to keep track other than a huge manual effort.
So I say: let's keep focused on the original intent of a central repository
to support and help aircraft developers (but not lock them in if they don't
want), and also facilitate keeping aircraft working and consistent when
something on the software side changes. If there are some negative side
effects, then lets build a system that allows us to track and reference
external hangars and external models. (If that is what we want and need.)
I have no problem putting links to other aircraft or having them somehow
show up in a search, but the impediment is time and technology. So rather
than argue over it, let's build something that fixes the problem --
something that helps us categorize and index and link to all the available
aircraft, not just the ones that are GPL and managed within the central
FlightGear repository structure.
At the end of the day, I definitely want to encourage aircraft developers to
consider releasing their work under the GPL and managing their aircraft as
part of the central core of FlightGear. I think in the long term this has
the best net positive effect for everyone. But certainly I understand there
can be many reasons to do otherwise and I don't think we have any negative
feelings towards developers that choose a different route, I think we'd like
to support that and help them list and promote their aircraft too.
Thanks,
Curt.
On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:57 AM, syd adams <adams....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Im still not sleeping , so thanks for clearing things up. I for one
> like the aircraft split , just awaiting the require permissions.Will
> be nice to get my own work up to date without risking breaking
> something elsewhere in fgdata .
> Cheers
>
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 5:42 AM, James Turner <zakal...@mac.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 19 Oct 2011, at 12:27, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote:
> >
> >> Most of us are adult people, and most of the time we are able to act
> like
> >> civilized people, i.e. we can work out things in a reasonable way
> without
> >> invoking the law and waving license around. There are some rules for
> >> emergency cases necessary though. So, I'm pretty sure no one will go
> ahead
> >> and modify your stuff without asking you first as long as you're around
> >> and participating. Hasn't ever happened to me (and the temptation must
> >> have been there...).
> >
> > +1 to all of this, thanks to Thorsten for expressing it very nicely!
> >
> > James
> >
> >
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a
> > definitive record of customers, application performance, security
> > threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes
> > sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense.
> > http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
> >
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a
> definitive record of customers, application performance, security
> threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes
> sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense.
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct
> _______________________________________________
> Flightgear-devel mailing list
> Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
>
--
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org - http://gallinazo.flightgear.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a
definitive record of customers, application performance, security
threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes
sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct
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