Brad Thompson wrote: >I apologize to everyone for going over this again. I've raised all these >points before. > Well, this time let's remember to write it down and put it into the FAQ, eh?
>None of those licenses gives you the "authority to contribute" those extra >binary pieces as OGC, which means the binary file cannot be called "100% >OGC". So it is not possible to use a modern development environment to >create software that is "100% OGC". I will make one tiny revision to the >above statement. It IS possible to write code that is 100% OGC in an >interpreted environment, such as JavaScript, VBScript, PHP, Perl or Python. >In such a case there is no compiled code to distribute, so there is no more >difficulty marking the OGC than in any text file. > To rephrase for those even more non-techie than me... Modern Software Development requires use of parts of code that, in Brad's opinion, cannot be released as OGC because the licenses that allow for their use do not allow for their use this way. For example, when you write a windows "setup.exe" type file, you are using someone else's code to get your code to work right. The problem he has identified is, as he said, the lack of authority to contribute. With things such as Visual Studio, this can be quite a problem. With scripting languages that aren't real code, it's not nearly as much as a problem. In any case, I still think that a solution is possible. For starters, yes, you can write all new OGC code from scratch. It only ever has to be done once, though. Also, AFAIK there are various open-source libraries that allow for cross-licenseing. From how I see this, it's simply a matter of either finding and using libraries that will allow you to use them in OGC, or finding a way to clearly identify such libraries as not OGC. If they're seperate files, this would be ideal--but I have a feeling this might require an intolerable ammount of work for most people. As a practical matter, though, all that has to be done is that libraries have to be picked who's owners will not object, for whatever reason, to the project. As I understand, no one aside from the copyright holder has standing to sue (until said holder sues, of course.) DM P.S. in the interested of getting somewhere, I've sent a message to the folks at gnu.org. If I hear back from them, I'll relay the message. _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
