Even back in the early days when FlightGear was just starting out, I
thought it would be pretty great if someday I could get paid to work
on FlightGear full time. So far no one has stepped up to the plate
and offered to cover my salary simply for the pleasure of assisting an
open source project. That would be great, but if someone actually
wanted to do this, realistically I'd probably encourage them to give
their money to a more deserving charity.
However, as time goes on, there are little seeds of opportunity that
come along once in a while. As can be expected, anything that would
pay me or anyone else to work on FlightGear would most likely need
some sort of financial incentive. FlightGear would have to satisfy
some need they are trying to fullfill.
There are some realities that we as a project are going to have to
face in the upcoming years, and personally, I'd prefer to control our
destiny, rather than have it control us.
One reality is that what we have going here is pretty darn cool and
impressive and it is getting to the point where FlightGear or portions
thereof could be highly attractive to various companies. More than a
few people are impressed with FlightGear in it's current state when
they see it for the first time. (that doesn't mean we still don't
have a lot of work to do ... )
I would prefer a culture where companies go through us and work with
us to achieve their objectives rather than go around us. I'd prefer
that we were in control of the process, rather than having companies
simply do whatever they want.
Another reality is time (or the lack thereof.) It seems that as life
goes on, I have less and less time to spend on any particular thing.
Life just get's busier and busier, and I get stretched thinner and
thinner. I have less and less time for hobbies. Finding ways to
generate income from my would would free me up to spend more time
developing code for our project and less time helping my boss get
rich.
Now as you point out, the benifits to the flightgear project is that
if someone is 100% focused on FlightGear, they can accomplish a lot in
a relatively short amount of time. This can have huge benefits to our
project. For example, I've been chipping away at runway lighting for
the last few weeks in my spare time. If I was doing this full time,
I'd probably have it done a long time ago. That would benefit
everyone involved.
There are trade offs to whatever course we take. Personally I made a
conscious choice when I got involved in this open-source project. I
knew we could never pull this off in a classic commercial sense and
there were other groups (fly, propilot, etc.) that actually tried
without any long term success. The open source approach allowed us to
get to where we are today without needing to ship a product, pay
employees, etc. And also I know that on my own, I could never have
come up with something even to close to the same calliber as
flightgear.
There is also a matter of trust. If I go off and participate in some
commercial venture involving flightgear, am I selling out? Am I
screwing everyone else? I see it as getting paid to spend my time
working on FlightGear. Most likely the bulk of that time would go
towards contributing to the open-source body of code. Nothing is
taken away from the FlightGear project, but many things are certain to
be given to it. I know I'm far from perfect and can say/do some
stupid things now and then, and people certainly should be cautious,
but hopefully I've earned your trust over the years. If I was in this
to try to make a quick buck ... well ... after five years of not
having made a quick buck ... I'd either be a complete idiot, or more
likely I'm doing this because I love it. That still doesn't mean I
wouldn't like to find a way to get paid for my efforts so I can spend
more time doing it, but lacking that, I'm still happy to continue
giving as much time as I can afford for the love of mixing computers
and aviation.
So in terms of licensing our code. I think it is a good thing if we
can position the code so that we can take advantage of our own work or
at least make it possible to do so. I'm proposing that we move very
slowly and very carefully. I'm not proposing anything radical I don't
think. What I would like to do at some point is start looking at key
sections of code, and with appropriate discussion, move them
individually to SimGear and convert the license to LGPL. From other
feedback I've heard, people have generally been receptive to this
idea, and if we attack it one section at a time I think it is doable.
In many senses I'm talking about moving towards my original goal with
simgear to turn it into a simulator construction set, or simulation
kernel, depending on what you want to call it.
Having said all that, I have no immediate plans to quit my full time
job, however there are some little seeds of opportunity I'd like to be
able to water and see what grows.
Have I dug myself a deep enough hole yet? :-)
Curt.
Julian Foad writes:
> Well, it doesn't matter what license is used for the wrapper code:
>
> for (i=1, i<N; ++i) {
> subsystem[i].start();
> }
>
> because anyone could re-write it easily. Effectively we're talking
> about putting as much as possible under LGPL. At first I thought that
> sounded like betrayal, but now I'm thinking it sounds good. It would
> allow companies who sell a product to include part or (essentially) all
> of Flight Gear in their product. They would still have an obligation to
> make freely available any modifications to Flight Gear components, so we
> and anyone else would not lose out and might benefit if they felt
> generous. They might just put minimal hooks in to get at what they
> need, and not contribute anything valuable back to us. I don't think
> that matters much. They won't gain a special commercial advantage,
> because all of their competitors will be able to use FG in their
> products too.
>
> If we do not do this, companies which might want to use (part of) FG in
> their products will instead write their own proprietary code, and almost
> certainly keep it proprietary. Their potential input to the world of
> computing will be sealed in a private box and never shared.
>
> Curt, you have mentioned before that you work in a Human Factors
> Research Lab and use FG (or parts of it) for (ground-) vehicle display
> systems. I assume you are thinking of enabling a commercial product to
> be made from this. That's OK by me.
>
> As a programmer I strongly support measures that avoid duplication of
> work. I'm not sure whether GPL does this better by "persuading" users
> to share their own code so that they can use shared code, or the LGPL,
> by giving users more flexibility with what they can do.
>
> If people are concerned about unfair use of LGPL'd libraries, then we
> should think about how to make such a library less susceptible, probably
> by making its interface tighter.
>
> Disclaimer: these are just some current thoughts, and I reserve the
> right to change my mind.
>
> - Julian
>
>
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--
Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project
Twin Cities [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org
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