Re: [Flightgear-devel] Licensing issues

[Julian Foad]

Curtis L. Olson wrote:
> What I would like to propose for people's consideration, is the idea
> of taking each of FlightGear's component libraries and converting them
> to the LGPL license. The top level wrapper code (i.e. whatever is in
> src/Main) would remain GPL.

Well, it doesn't matter what license is used for the wrapper code:

for (i=1, i<N; ++i) {
subsystem[i].start();
}

because anyone could re-write it easily. Effectively we're talking about putting as much as possible under LGPL. At first I thought that sounded like betrayal, but now I'm thinking it sounds good. It would allow companies who sell a product to include part or (essentially) all of Flight Gear in their product. They would still have an obligation to make freely available any modifications to Flight Gear components, so we and anyone else would not lose out and might benefit if they felt generous. They might just put minimal hooks in to get at what they need, and not contribute anything valuable back to us. I don't think that matters much. They won't gain a special commercial advantage, because all of their competitors will be able to use FG in their products too.

If we do not do this, companies which might want to use (part of) FG in their products will instead write their own proprietary code, and almost certainly keep it proprietary. Their potential input to the world of
computing will be sealed in a private box and never shared.

Curt, you have mentioned before that you work in a Human Factors Research Lab and use FG (or parts of it) for (ground-) vehicle display systems. I assume you are thinking of enabling a commercial product to be made from this. That's OK by me.

As a programmer I strongly support measures that avoid duplication of work. I'm not sure whether GPL does this better by "persuading" users to share their own code so that they can use shared code, or the LGPL, by giving users more flexibility with what they can do.

If people are concerned about unfair use of LGPL'd libraries, then we should think about how to make such a library less susceptible, probably by making its interface tighter.

Disclaimer: these are just some current thoughts, and I reserve the right to change my mind.

- Julian


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