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What matters more than "how it's supposed to be" is that many pages use flash to do menus (Yes, even simple ones you could do with pure HTML, or small javascript script) and depend on being able to get URL's from the flash file (or user trying to guess which html the links are supposed to load, or using external viewer to check which URL's the flash wants to load, and entering that manually)

Of course it would be possible to modify external swf viewer to send link back to Sputnik.

I'm not trying to defend flash. In fact I just hate it. I'm just trying to tell why it might be better have it "embedded" rather than separate.
Of course the internet would be a LOT better place, if no page used flash at all.

About the plugin interface & GPL problem:

What if someone created a browser, that has a plugin-interface that's 100% compatible to that of Sputnik, but the whole thing would be licenced under GPL. Then everyone just created plugins for that browser instead? (see where I'm getting?)

As a program it wouldn't have to do much, if anything. Maybe just display the pages as non-formatted text or something

Oh, someone could also clone ANR's plugin-interfaces to some simple GPL licenced command-line-only player, and people could port some GPL licenced players to that (We still lack sid and uade, well those are the most important ones)

[ Edited by Jupp3 on 2006/10/6 11:32 ]

I once looked at porting flash players (don't really know why, perhaps because I work mainly with Flash programming).. I found one for Linux (Open Source) written completely from scratch with a very generous licence (think it was LGPL, but I'm not entirely sure.. wasn't GPL at least). The source was available, and I even talked to the author who said porting wouldn't be so hard and would give his support in doing so.

Too bad I never took it up, because now I forgot the name of the player and can't remember it

I'll see if I can find it. Such a player could surely act as a base for a sputnik plugin.

I hate flash too, but I have to admit, that it is a must-have feature today on internet. And I don't mean now the stupid flash games, or the ugly web pages who have flash menus (when someone creates a flash menu instead of a HTML one, I don't care his homepage anymore...), but video streaming. Yes, it is very-very bad idea to decode videos with an interpreted language player, but I have to say, that almost 90% of the videos on the net are now accessable through this way. (Think about Google Videos or Youtube.) And I want to see these videos...

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It's also worth considering if "a version of flash player we could have" does even support them. You know, Flash isn't too "open" format (reverse-engineered efforts aside)

Actually I wonder if recent-ish version of mplayer can play those videos?

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This may help
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2006-10-00027-EN.html , well it failed at my first try yesterday evening, but it is reported to work.

To watch YouTube videos on MOS you can try this ARexx script from Fab1: http://fabportnawak.free.fr/youtube_downloader.lha . You need the latest mPlayer: http://fabportnawak.free.fr/mplayer/mplayer1.0pre8-test.lha .
Works very nicely for me.

Kind regards,
Andrea

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GPL does indeed suck alot when you use it without knowing what it does (and many do unfortunately), but you have to remember that most of the time the authors of GPL software are doing you a favour when opensourcing software, even though the license might be too restrictive for your particular use...

Anyway, to answer your question; it is possible to create datatypes based on GPL code as GPL has an exception for linking against the OS, and as datatypes are an integral part of MorphOS and applications access datatypes agnostically through the datatypes' superclass it's legal (you obviously still have to make the sources to the datatype available though).

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Well not exactly, but almost everything uses GPL v2 these days (and I'm basing all my statements on this version of the license). ;)

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Yes, that plugin is illegal.

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Yes, I see where you're getting, but that doesn't solve the problem .. the plugin would still be illegal to use with the non-GPL compatible browser, it doesn't change anything. In fact it only makes it worse as you intentionally do this just so that users can and most likely will (since I guess your GPL compatible browser won't be as useful) deliberately incriminate themselves...


- CISC

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I would like to know something:

Who is the one doing ilegal stuff, the one that creates a plugin from GPL software, the author of the browser (Marcik this time) that has a plugin interface, or the user that combines both?.

In the first two cases, I do not want this to happen, so I do not want the thing done. But... in the third case, I would love to have everything working. If I (the final user) is the one breaking the GPL rules, I (and I think 99 percent of people) will assume the risk of having RMS knocking at my door with a lawyer...

I think its hard to blame someone for using GPL plugins in a non-GPL app. Think about the reverse case: I have my marvellous GPL browser, with GLP plugins, and suddenly, Microsoft, releases a commercial-licensed browser, miracously (Microsoft sais non intencionally) hundred percet compatible with those plugins. I do not think MS can be accused of anything, nor the plugin programmer, and not ever the user that combines the licenses, as he is not doing any illegal thing...

I-m not an expert about GPL, but I have serious doubts about the legality of that kind of restrictions in some countries... Here in Spain, a Judge would laugh at Stallman's face with that kind of acusation against a final user.

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Well, if you don't give a rats arse about the legalities, maybe you should atleast give some thought to the moralities of abusing someone's software (which was given to you for free (sources and everything)) in a way that goes wholly against the author's wishes?

I might add (before anyone draws any unrelated parallels) this is not about a user using software in some unintended way, nor is it really about someone facilitating such a thing (neither is actually illegal nor immoral in itself), but one (or more) developer(s) taking someone's sources and upon seeing that the license for those makes them unfit for their project, instead of giving up those sources, hatch a grand scheme to subvert it and abuse the sources outside of its license for their own gain. This might even occur unintentionally (like in the case of someone making a GPL plugin for non-GPL compatible software) due to ignorance (simply haven't read, or didn't understand the license), but it's still wrong in the end.

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True, neither is necessarily doing anything illegal .. if there already existed binary GPL plugins you could download and that complied with the GPL (ie, sources were available etc), what you do with those binaries is your own business (the only thing you commit to with regards to the GPL as a user of the binary is to make sure whomever you pass the binary on to has access to the sources), and Microsoft could simply claim that this API was so popular that it made sense to be binary compatible with it (there might even be a great number of non-GPL (yet GPL-compatible) plugins), however this is not the scenario we are discussing here...

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Well, most people laugh in Stallman's face, it's kinda hard not to when you see it... ;)

Anyway, building up a case against users for such a thing is at best frivolous indeed, however you might be able to get something on the party that was instrumental to the gunpowder plot itself, claiming that you somehow accidentally made the plugin API binary compatible doesn't fly well even with the most clueless judge. Mind you, it would be silly to make such a claim, as there's nothing illegal in making binary compatible APIs (phew ;) ) .. the core of the case would have to be to establish whether or not it was done to intentionally circumvent the GPL (and if the accused happens to have some sort of affiliation with such a plugin (as could be construed in previously mentioned examples) one might start contemplating the purchase of a budget pack of soap-on-a-roap)...


- CISC

[ Edited by CISC on 2006/10/6 22:51 ]

100% according with you. Anyway, I just propose a "I give you a tool, and you decide if you want to use it legally or not" (last thing I want to see, is Marcik involved in license problems).

In the other hand, I have been speaking with my local FSF contact (sounds nice :P), and he had not a very clear opinion of the whole thing... It seems, is some kind of blopper or no-one's land in GPL license... he finally told me it doesn't seem very GPL-compliant, but doesn't break it either (of course, with the adecuate programming styles, avoiding static links and all that).

To me, it seems something like: I have MS Internet Explorer. I make a GPL MSIE plugin, and then, I claim MSIE to be GPLed.

I can't give a final answer, but I don't think there will be any legal issue in this case. I think we can make sputnik, and GPL addons. I will tell something, as soon as my friend (the FSF's guy) tells me something.

Bad example because MSIE is an OS component covered by the just mentioned GPL exception.

Never mind, get Winamp, for example, or get WoW. WoW has some visual addons, that are GPL, and are aplied directly over the game's interface.

@ Henes

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So, Sputnik just needs to become an OS component of MorphOS?

@amiades

If these WoW addons are not based on some other GPL source written by a different person then there is nothing illegal.
The author just picked the wrong licence :-)
You can also argue he implicitly added a few exceptions to allow this.

If what you say is true, then GPL license, is not a so effective virus, it could work in a more eficient way... and because I'm very little altruist, I think that virus is eficient.

If this addons are legal, even if they don't use previosly programmed GPL code, then what we are discusing about is legal too. There is no difference between first brew GPL code and previosly programmed GPL code AFAIK. Both have the same "rights", and could be used the same way.

[ Edited by amiades on 2006/10/7 13:38 ]

MSIE is NOT an OS Component,
it's not allowed to be in the US or EU.

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I think I heard something like that, and that MS had to pay a lot of money in some trials... thats probably true. So... destroying MS egemony, is as easy as writing a plugin for MSIE based on GPL code? nice... I will perhaps try later ;).

@amiades

This is very different.
We were discussing the port of a GPL flash player written by a different author and released under the licence he decided on.
You are not allowed to change his licence to adapt it to your whishes.
It is GPL and will stay GPL. Without any exception allowing you to link it against some non-GPL Sputnik (except if part of the OS maybe).

This is a different case from, let's say, ambient where the author himself decided to add a few exceptions to let non-GPL applications linking against his "GPL" icon.library and workbench.library.

If anybody from the current ambient programmers had decided to do it, that would have been completly illegal.


[ Edited by Henes on 2006/10/7 13:45 ]

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But I think, this was not what was said. The thing was, to release Sputnik with a commercial license, and then, make gpl plugins for that software. We are not changing any license. The plugins, are still GPL, as code we used to develop them before. The core of the discusion, is if we can use a GPL plugin in a comercial SW (note that the plugin, is still GPL, no change on license).

For some reasons (is being already done, it could be done all the way around with extrange behavior, and because my FSF friend told me he thought it was not ilegal), I think it is not ilegal. Perhaps not totally ethic, but legal. As far, as I think GPL is not ethic too, the ethic thinking comes to a 1-1...

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As I see it, none of them is doing anything illega.

The GPL covers the distribution of the code, in binary form, and prohibits linking GPL code, dynamically or statically, with non GPL-compatible code.

The key point, however, is distribution.

If the linking stage happens at the user's end, there's no conflict with the GPL.

And if one's re$ally worried about all that, he can simply distribute the source code and let the user compile the datatype or generic plugin by himself: no binary distribution.

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But you can only write GPL plugins for "GPL compatible" software.
A closed source product is not "GPL compatible" (except if it is the OS itself).
So, if I understood Marcik correctly, any Sputnik plugin interface would not be "GPL compatible".

So, if you really want to release such GPL plugin then you need to add some exception to allow its usage in such context (but then why using the GPL in the first place ?)
And, of course, you can't do this if you base your work on somebody's else GPL work (like libflash or Gnash).


But, really, let Marcik works on his favourite toy first :-)
AFAIK, there is no usable opensource flash player anyway.


[ Edited by Henes on 2006/10/7 14:48 ]

Some people seem to be awfully confused about what a license means.

A license (GPL or anything) is a set of rules set up by the author (or owner) of something for its usage. These rules can be anything:
- pay the author 1 dollar per used copy
- only use the product for non-nuclear related activities
- redistribute any modified sourcecode openly
- etc

You can't use the product unless you agree to the license. If the license is unreasonable (asks too much money, is too "virus-like" in your opinion) then you will surely choose not to use this product.

As mentioned, the license is decided by the author(s)/owner(s). So of course it can never be changed by anyone else. The GPL certainly has no "magical" properties that allows it to change other licenses against the will of its authors/owners. However, if the author of some software voluntarily uses GPL as part of the software, then this author, by choosing to do so, has also decided to follow the GPL license which means the entire project may need to be GPL (depending on technical details such as linking etc).

If you as a third party write a plug-in using GPL code for a project X, then certainly you have no power to change the license for X. So if X is not GPL-compatible, you are breaking the GPL by writing this plug-in.

If you pretend to write the project for some useless dummy GPL project Y that only exists for the purpose of making your plug-in compatible with X, then it is obvious that you are only doing this to avoid following the license, and it's the same as if you tried to avoid paying a license fee by juggling responsibilities back and forth between different shady companies to confuse people.

So, marcik would not break the GPL by making a plug-in interface. That is perfectly fine of course. As long as he is not involved, he is not responsible for what people do with the interface, it is something that has perfectly legitimate purposes (namely the writing of non GPL plug-ins, certainly nothing strange!).

A third party writing a GPL plug-in would break the GPL. Any amount of juggling cannot change that.

If he want a open source system for Plugins he could went APL or even LGPL, BSD.... no need to go GPL

I have consulted it to quite a lot of people, and everybody tells me the same (even the FSF guy), it can be done. Is not ilegal to make a commercial licensed software, and then, use a GPL plugin with it.

Then, I have question to them, why Elf (frogger author) has problem
with one plugin, and frogger doesn't support it unfortunately.