On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 18:21:39 +0100 Oliver C. wrote: > > Personally i think that it is not a good idea to advertise aircrafts for > FlightGear that are not free. > > Here's the reason why: > Advertising none free aircrafts or scenery addons on the flightgear > website could lead to a common behaviour that people tend to not > release their aircrafts or addons under the GPL license when other more > restrictive ways like simple Freeware licenses are possible and > accepted.
I think this is true. I differ with you in how awful I think this
would be. I would absolutely *prefer* that people use the GPL.
Everything I do is licensed that way. But if someone who has
put a lot of effort into creating something decides they want to
make it available to the community, but do not want other people
to be able to make money off of it without the original author
getting any credit, I'm not going to tell them that they're bad
people for wanting that.
The more people creating add-ons for FlightGear, the more
attractive it will look. The more attractive it looks, the
more users it will have. The more users it has, the more
people will create add-ons for it, *some* of which will
doubtless be licensed under the GPL. Those are GPL'd
add-ons that those new contributors would not have created
otherwise, because they never would have tried FlightGear
in the first place.
> This has also many other disadvantages like:
>
> - you can't modify or correct the aircrafts, scenery addons etc.
This depends on what non-GPL license is used; it's not universally
true.
> - aircrafts and scenery addons might get outdated or incompatible to
> newer versions of FlightGear
This is true anyway, even with GPL'd stuff. You might be saying
that license restrictions might make it difficult for third parties
to fix such future incompatibilities, in which case my answer is
as above: it depends on the license. It's not universally true.
> - users are forced to collect their aircrafts and scenery addons from
> different places, which is a bad thing, because it is extremly
> cumbersomely and annoying. MS Flight Simulator people know what i am
> talking about. FlightGear should make use of the fact that it is open
> source, it allows users to get everything in one piece without the
> hassle to visit hundreds of different websites.
This is going to be true no matter what. People are always free to
create add-ons for FlightGear, and they're always free to put whatever
licenses they want on it and/or make them available in other places.
The only way to prevent the scenario you describe would be to somehow
make it impossible for anyone creating add-ons to license them under
anything other than the GPL. I don't know how you'd do that, but I
definitely wouldn't support it.
> - the amount of GPL'd flightgear data like aircrafts and scenery would
> grow slower when simple freeware addons are okay and linked to on the
> flightgear website.
I'm not sure this is true. Your thinking is presumably that an
add-on licensed under a typical "freeware" license is an add-on
that could have been licensed under the GPL, but wasn't. However,
it's not a zero-sum exercise. One of the reasons there are so many
add-ons for MSFS is because there are so many people using it,
and one of the reasons there are so many people using it is because
there are so many add-ons for it. If the availability of "freeware"
-licensed add-ons causes the FlightGear community to increase in
size, and thus the number of people creating scenery and aircraft
increases, then it's quite possible that the amount of GPL'd add-ons
would increase also.
I think we should always *encourage* people making stuff for FlightGear
to license stuff under the GPL. But I don't think we should ostracize
enthusiastic users who opt for other licenses for the things they
create for the community to use.
-c
--
Chris Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(remove "snip-me." to email)
"As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I
have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
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