Chris,
I think the benefit of having sort of a VATSIM-interface or -bridge for
FlightGear is pretty much unquestioned, therefore I'll leave these
details out. The point is a completely different one and probably
consist of just two simple parts:
1.) Like probably almost every other OpenSource projects, FlightGear
attracts its developer "crowd" (some would call it "community") by the
features which are specific to OpenSource development in general: Free
access to the source code, multiple people working more or less
collaboratively on the same part/feature, shared responsibility and
certainly a lot more.
This is fundamentally different from the development model you'd be
forced into after signing an NDA: The NDA would presumably make almost
every flavour of collaboration and peer-review impossible and the
respective developer would end up as the sole responsible person for
interfacing a variety of different FlightGear versions on a colourful
bouquet of different platforms. Doesn't sound too attractive ....
"Chris O'Neill" wrote:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but what VATSIM seems to be saying is that they
> don't want "just anybody" trying to connect to their network, hence the
> "only approved clients" policy, and in order to enforce that policy they
> want to be the only source for releasing the source code.
As far as I can tell the "we need to protect our sim network" is void.
If they really make this claim, I'd consider it as a specious argument.
To put it into different words: I know of at least three distinct
implementations of VATSIM network protocols which had been created
without VATSIM's help by reverse engineering. Thus, if anyone is
seriously interested in compromising their network, there are
sufficient opportunities to do so.
One of the three people who reverse-engineered VATSIM-protocols was
saying in a joke that he suspected the main reason for VATSIM to keep
their protocol secret was not to disclose how poorly designed it is :-)
Cheers,
Martin.
--
Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are !
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