I have no time for detailed legalities of the message but one should note regarding GPL (at least v3 and probably v2, maybe it is time for fg to go v3?)
1) It is legal to fork a GPL project at any time if some conditions are met. In simple terms the forked project must provide their modification in machine readable form. 2) It is legal to try to make money out of GPL software Comments on 1). A simple google search (I used "source site:proflightsimulator.com") will lead to http://www.proflightsimulator.com/downloads716/ReadMe.txt where we can read Source Code: Full source code has not been included in the download area, however it is available on request. Please contact us if you require this. http://proflightsimulator.com/support/ So I suppose one could test them by requesting the source. They should provide it in machine readable form and then we can scrutinize their modification and use them if we choose to (and this would actually benefit proflightsim!). If they do not provide the source then they break the license agreement. But are we prepared to battle this in courts? Probably this is the only licence breaking proflightsim does? Comment on 2). If they provide a better user experience (as they claim to do) then go ahead an charge your user base but remember to provide source to whoever requests it. I do not support their business model mostly because they make it hard to get their source code modifications (i.e., no simple download source link) and are somewhat obscure with their relation to fg. However, we must accept that others may be able to make money out of GPLd software. The way to counter the above is to make sure that flightgear.org is so much better than the opposition that the opposition fade away. Unfortunately this does not always mean technical brilliance from a user point of view but rather user experience. That is something proflight may have realized, I have not tried their package so I cannot make a judgement whether they improve user experience or not. I think that the single most important thing fg could do to fight flightpro and similar is to improve user experience and release often. I think that the latter is being worked on. I know that user experience is getting better all the time but there is a lot more that could be done for the non-technical user. But these two points are assuming that we want to expand the user base. Cheers, Jari - not affiliated with any commercial or shady flight simulator business but a user of Microsoft flight simulators and FlightGear (git next branch) On 2011-01-14 11.08, Chris Wilkinson wrote: > http://www.proflightsimulator.com/fg-help.htm > > Any comments into the accuracy of this statement? > > Regards, > > Chris Wilkinson, YBBN/BNE. > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Protect Your Site and Customers from Malware Attacks > Learn about various malware tactics and how to avoid them. Understand > malware threats, the impact they can have on your business, and how you > can protect your company and customers by using code signing. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnl > > > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Protect Your Site and Customers from Malware Attacks Learn about various malware tactics and how to avoid them. Understand malware threats, the impact they can have on your business, and how you can protect your company and customers by using code signing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/oracle-sfdevnl _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
