[osflash] Commercial use of OSFlash projects?

[Till Schneidereit]

Mark Winterhalder wrote:
> On 9/10/06, Till Schneidereit <tschneidereit at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Actually, I'm not too sure this has ever been really made clear for Flashplayer based projects at all.
> 
> I think we can be pretty sure it hasn't. The issue came up here a few
> times and nobody pointed to anything relevant.
> 
>> Normally, with web based project you don't need to release any source above what the user gets in the form of html/ js code anyway because all of the real code just gets executed on the server. This is why google can use all of that gpl'd software without distributing their (quite extensive, from what I've heard) changes. Note that the new GPL V3 will be modified to adress this exact case.
>> With Flashplayer based project, the situation is different, because quite a lot of the code is executed to the user an run on their machine. AFAIKT, this definitely is a binary distribution and would require the distributor to make the source available as well.
>> So I think Mark is pretty on spot here, it would just be nice to have a website spelling out the exact terms of distribution of code/ binaries under a number of popular licenses as they pertain to Flash developers.
> 
> We could come up with a catalogue of questions and authors could give
> their answers to them, sort of like a "signing statement", explaining
> how they interpret the license they chose. Maybe there could be an
> "OSFlash community interpretation" of common OS licenses, and authors
> would provide the license as something like "This software is licensed
> under the LGPL as interpreted on http://osflash.org/licenses".
> Alternatively, CC-style "yes/no" licenses authors can assemble
> themselves, but I guess we'd need a lawyer for that.
> I'm not sure about the legal aspects of it if it would go to court,
> but still believe it would help a great deal.

While I think that this would make sense as a process, I don't think it would make any legal difference at all. Technically, most licenses allow you to widen their scope, i.e. you can allow users of a gpl'd piece of to also use it under another license like Mozilla is doing with their GPL, MPL, NPL triple-licensing, but you can't put any more restrictions on the distribution. Thus, if you as the developer interpret the gpl in a way (this is just an exreme example, not that anyone here would actually do this) that allowed a user to modify the software and distribute binaries of the modifications without the source, you can't prevent any user of said modified binary from suing the person distributing it based on a more widely / at all legally accepted interpretation of the GPL.
Because of that, I think it'd be best to go one of the following routes:
a) Try to find a lawyer specialized on software licensing / directly work with the FSF or a similar organization to create some basic guidelines for the Flash world, or
b) Try to find a field of software distribution that has enough similarities with the Flash world and where these discussions have already come to a sufficient conclusion and try to derive rules for the Flash world based on that.
My take is that the second route should work out fine, seeing as there is a field of sofware distribution with lots of similarities - the Java applet scene - in which these discussions have pretty certainly already been conducted.

cheers,
till

> 
> Anyway, here are some suggested questions regarding libraries,
> specifically LGPL in otherwise closed code:
> 
> * Can I use the class(es)' API, provided I don't change their code?
> 
> * Do I have to keep the class(es) as a separate SWF and load it on runtime?
> 
> * Can I override methods of the API / extend the contained classes,
> even if loaded as a separate SWF?
> 
> Mark
> 
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Till Schneidereit        Laufgraben 31
phone ++49 172 9474164   20146 Hamburg, germany
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