[osflash] Commercial use of OSFlash projects?

[Ken Rogers]

This is a whole lot of hot air for most Flash Developers if you ask me.  
I think what most 'Flashers' want to see is a list of the most popular 
class libraries and a simple 'yes you can use this to make a little 
cash' or not.  I have always written my own controls packages as well as 
other abstracts due to the fact that I want to get things done, not wade 
through someones jargon about usage.  SOOOOOOO many AS packages are put 
out there pushing people to use them, yet they end up having 
restrictions.  To me it isn't really 'open' source if you can't sit 
down, write an app and sell it without worry that someone is going to 
get all bent out of shape cause one of their classes was in there.

It would be nice for the OSFlash site to have a page that give a SIMPLE 
breakdown of what is, and is not possible to use for a project that 
might make a few dollars(yes, I am an american capitalist)

I love a lot of these projects but would never think about using them in 
real world situations due to the gray area a lot of us non-lawyers see.
as2lib, aslib, animation package, fuse, ascb, wis math libs  are just a 
few that I have enjoyed learning from but do not use in commercial 
apps.  It is fun to use them but I have work to do...and if they can't 
be used, overall I am not too interested except to rewrite in my own way 
in order to use.

Maybe a lot of these can be used in commercial apps, but it is not easy 
to the average developer to discern this. I freely admit I do not 
understand the ins and out of these licenses, as do many AS developers.  
Why isn't there just a license for "here take this and have a nice day, 
please leave my class header giving me credit for writing this".

I am a simple man, excuse my inability to discern these things for myself..

-Ken


Mark Winterhalder wrote:
> On 9/10/06, Till Schneidereit <tschneidereit at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> In that extreme example you're probably right -- but as far as
> interpretations are involved, it should be doable. Like, in the case
> of LGPL libraries, the question whether "linking" in flash means it
> must be an external SWF loaded at runtime. I'd say that strictly, it
> is, but there is room for interpretation. Such a "signing statement"
> would clarify these issues by giving the interpretation of the
> library's author who would most likely say that it's OK to compile the
> library directly into one SWF. It would be, in a way, part of the
> license both parties agreed on.
> But IANAL, of course...
>
>   
>> 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
>>     
>
> Yeah, maybe just asking the FSF for advice on this would help? They
> already have lawyers, maybe they could look into it for us?
>
>   
>> 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.
>>     
>
> I don't know enough about Java applets to tell how far the
> similarities go. If anybody knows a good resource where somebody
> professionally looked into this it would be interesting.
>
> But (damn!) do we need lawyers for everything...
>
> Mark
>
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