On 28.08.2011 16:43, Paul Guhl wrote: > Lets clarify the issues: the modellers asked me to provide secured file > format to prevent model theft and resell for benefit. They are willing > to contribute to FG and don't plan to sell add-ons. Instead they would > like to see their copyright enforced and not abused by others. AFAIK > open source licenses in generall are about the programs and their code, > not the conent people create with this software.
You are wrong here. It's about the project as a whole. Our intention is to create a _free_ flight simulator. And a flight simulator only makes sense as a whole: you need the core program, you need scenery, you need aircraft and documentation. Without the aircraft or scenery or documentation, the core would be useless. Same vice versa. FlightGear lives as a free project because we have many people contributing under the same free license terms. Some contribute C++ code, others aircraft animations, others aircraft models - and some work on the Wiki/documentation. It's great that way. No one would volunteer to work on the _GPLed_ core, if all (or the majority) of the other parts (be it aircraft or scenery) weren't free too. Why should we? We could just use MSFS or xplane, or create addons for these, if we wanted a closed source / non-GPLed / unfree flight simulator. > I bet noone would ask > companies using open office to disclose their documents or excel sheets Bad comparison. Open office is only usable since _all_ of it is free and GPLed - the core and the GUI. Aircraft are very much the "GUI frontend" of a flight simulator. Without aircraft models, the FlightGear core was dead and useless. We cannot force anyone to publish their own work under the GPL (at least when they really created everything from scratch, without reusing any part of another GPLed aircraft/source/...). So, yes, you can create closed/unfree aircraft - it's your decision (and btw, unlike "excel" sheets, aircraft are created by XML/text editors and 3D modelling software - so you don't even create aircraft _with_ FG itself). But you can't expect to receive active support by those working on free/GPLed parts - just so that others can keep their work closed. The FG project wouldn't work if the majority of people working on different areas were providing closed parts - or were using different licenses. > ;). I also notice that MSFS enjoys greater attention by add-on creators. I agree, and I think that's fine and hopefully it stays that way. I don't mind anyone creating payware/closed source add-ons. MSFS or xplane are great for that purpose. But why would we want payware/close source stuff for FG? That would mainly harm the project. The only reason to work on FG is, that everything is free/modifiable/adaptable to one's own needs. > As for the protection realization: i think of an OSG format plugin > supporting common OSG plugin conventions. The code won't be disclosed > and only shipped in compiled form for dynamic linking against. That sounds really "great". You're probably thinking about Windows binaries. Well, maybe Mac binaries. Too much hassle to provide matching libraries for the huge variety of Linux distros... Great. Well, you could create such a library - just don't expect much support from FG developers. But before you start: remember the concept doesn't make much sense. Once the model file is read by the OSG plugin, the entire data is decrypted and stays in memory. It's almost trivial to write a converter which uses the close-source "secret" OSG plugin and reads the encrypted file into the OSG scene graph. Then the tool can just traverse the scene graph and write the entire data (still unencrypted, of course) to a file (say to an ".osg" file with ".png" or ".dds" textures). So, it's trivial to convert the encrypted file into an unencrypted format, if you provide the decryption plugin. No one needs the plugin's source for that. And I could see people doing so, so models can be modified for local/personal purposes (which is the main reason for FG, don't forget). Of course, that wouldn't change the models' license. So eventually the license (and _only_ the license) protects. So, all the effort wouldn't give you any advantage (well, ok, maybe you could ask money for the plugin - then it could make a certain difference... ;-) ). So, to put it short: no, I don't think there was any misunderstanding :). cheers, Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EMC VNX: the world's simplest storage, starting under $10K The only unified storage solution that offers unified management Up to 160% more powerful than alternatives and 25% more efficient. Guaranteed. http://p.sf.net/sfu/emc-vnx-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
