On Tuesday 06 June 2006 17:52, Curtis L. Olson wrote: > Here's a question for all you amateur lawyers and GPL experts > out there. > > Let's say that someone wants to create a proprietary aircraft > within the FlightGear system, and then distribute a larger > "system" that includes FlightGear + that aircraft. > > In my view, the FlightGear GPL license covers our source code, > but not content created with or used by that code (except for > things like the base package which is explicitely licensed as > GPL.) Is it possible that someone could lay claim to any > newly created proprietary "content" (3d models, artwork, > panels, etc.) by way of the GPL? Even if FlightGear is happy > to allow people to create proprietary aircraft, could someone > upstream in plib or zlib or openal land somehow file a > complaint? > > To me this is analogous to Microsoft demanding all documents > created and owned by a company just because they created and > edited them with Microsoft Word. I just don't see that ever > happening. > > But I wonder what others think about this issue from a legal > point of view. > > Thanks, > > Curt.
I don't think we need to worry about the source code aspects of GPL in FG - that's fairly straight forward and well understood. It's the situation regarding the GPL'd data that seems a lot less clearer and is causing the most uncertainty. The GPL'd data that comes with FG can be separated in to two areas, broadly defined as artwork and configuration. Now, if someone were to take an aircraft or a building etc model, or a texture and then modify it, it would still be covered by the GPL because it would clearly be a derived work. However, the configuration files are how FG is instructed to work and so can't be GPL'd, even if proprietary configuration files are derived from ones already in FG. Basically, if you want to do the same thing in a proprietary regime as something that has already been done in GPL'd FG, the files will, and in fact _must_ have similar content. I'm not sure exactly how nasal should be treated though. Each script qualifies as a program and would therefore seem to belong with the source code but in fact, nasal use within FG is used as another way of controlling FG - just consider a simple script to toggle a property and how insisting that it is GPL'd would prevent any proprietary use of similar code, which seems nonsensical. LeeE _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
