On Mon, 9 Feb 2009, Robinson Tryon wrote:
If the language about "creating similar software" has been removed from the license, does that mean that there is less of a barrier for people who have installed the Flash Player client to participate in Gnash development?
Yes. As a precaution, we didn't contributions from people from the US who had installed the proprietary player as a precaution. It seems that we may now remove that restriction. But there are questions to be answered here too, for instance: for someone who had an older version of the proprietary player installed, does the "no derivatives" clause from the old EULA still apply even if they've upgraded to the new player?
My understanding of laws concerning reverse engineering is limited. Could hacking on the Gnash codebase be somehow construed as a "derivative work" if you have the Flash Player installed? Could actions such as documenting what output the Flash Player gives based on certain inputs be judged to be (legally unprotected) reverse engineering?
It sounds like you're looking for a risk assessment, but you would really need to talk to a lawyer for that. That said, in the US even the threat of a lawsuit is enough to ruin a person or a project. So we are (still) extra cautious with contributions from US residents. Bastiaan _______________________________________________ Gnash-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnash-dev
