Last week, I went to take a look at the AAF SDK. The license mumbo-jumbo just totally blew me away. So, I asked for some clarification from the organization, and with their permission, I am posting this here. Hopefully, this will clear the way to open source projects adopting this format as widely as it seems like that commercial ones will. Brad Gilmer wrote to me subsequently, and noted that are considering relicensing the SDK, perhaps with either the X or LGPL licenses. --p ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To: "Paul Barton-Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc: "Brad Gilmer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "AAF Association Info" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: aaf, gpl, and other mumbo jumbo We are in the process of reviewing the various open source licenses. Hopefully, the AAF Association will be able to release the AAF SDK under an open source license soon. I empathize with your dismay at the length of the current AAF licenses. But I don't believe that there should be any problems for adopting and using AAF as a client application. An AAF client application does not need access to the AAF source code. The AAF library can be provided as a binary library. If your application is running on a platform that we currently don't have a binary kit for, we would be try to make one. We do think that it is important for us to move the AAF source code to an open license. We want it to be clear that the AAF source is freely and fairly available and to make it possible for the open source community to take part in future development of AAF. It is important to have an open source license to enable open development of the AAF SDK itself, but it should be possible for a client to use the SDK with the current license. Please bear with us while we work through our lawyers in evaluating the open source licenses. If you have any specific questions, you can direct them to Brad Gilmer, the executive director of the AAF Association. Josh Goldman (for the AAF Association) ----------------------------------------------------------------------
