I understand the fear that many companies have of open source software, and the concern that the product that is their bread and butter might be illegally transferred among those users. However, there's another side to this that could be very positive for both sides. Just like giving away "free samples" at the grocery store is designed to sell more of that item, it seems to me like it could be a huge advantage to a company that deals with land imaging to donate a "sample" of their product to an open source project like FlightGear.
I'm not talking about giving away the rights to all of their images for free here. A more sensical approach might be to license, for no charge, a small chunk of scenery (like the bay area, for a good example) to users of FlightGear for personal use. The license would of course retain copyright, forbid redistribution of any form, etc. Just because the software is open source doesn't mean the scenery has to be, right? The scenery could even be distilled down or lower quality versions of their actual product. The company's name could appear in the acknowledgements for the software and maybe gain a spot on the home page for such a donation. The point would be to create something that looks really cool that would both show off their product as well as enhance the flightgear experience. My speculation is that very little business would be lost to people trying to illegally copy this limited set of images when it can be licensed for free from the company's web page. Rather, it might be a good demonstration of their product that brings them more business from people looking to purchase higher quality images of other places besides the default flightgear airport. Just a thought. In reality, it might be too much to expect a company to work this closely with the feared open source community, but I do see some real potential for mutual benefit. Maybe I've just got my head in the 3d virtual clouds. (Just enabled 3d clouds in flightgear for the first time today... very nice!) -Adam Matthew Law <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Mally, > > I wasn't aware that you were an MSFS developer and since I currently do a bit > of x-country practice in MSFS with the VisualFlight scenery I'd like to cong > ratulate you on an awesome job! > > I for one would be elated to see a commercially available version of the getm > apping derived scenery for FGFS not only for extra realism that it presents, > but commercial recognition could only be positive for the project as a whole. > As Dave said, I would also be willing to pay for the scenery even if it was > a little more expensive to offset the lower demand. It would be wonderful i > f VisualFlight permitted purchasers to use the textures in FGFS, but realisti > cally that probably won't happen...yet. > > It's human nature to try and maximise what you have available in this way but > I don't want to infringe anyone's EULA or put anyone - especially the 'small > guy' out of pocket either. I think the FGFS community is a little more open > and honest in this respect. I'm leaving this well alone until it becomes ac > ceptable to do so or I can buy the scenery 'for FGFS' :-) > > All the best, > > Matt. > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel > _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
