Hi all,
I need some advice with regards to licensing. As you know I am having some issues with Lapwing, however I I can over come these with the help of a non open source DLL file. Now I am very interested in doing this as it would mean that I could get the project finished. However I need to know if under the GPL, which Lapwing is currently under if I could distribute the DLL, the author doesn't have any issues with it although he won't open source it. I I am not allowed to distribute it is there anything that would allow me to do something similar. If not what would you think if I made Lapwing un-open source.
Steve
EDIT: Even if I closed the project up I would still distribute the source to anyone that wanted it as a separate download.
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First off, Unopen Sourcing Lapwing would be a step back in the open source movement in my eyes. You would be giving in to the "evil" closed source people of this world.
No really, Lapwing and all the programs we have designed here should stay open source, the freedom to work with someone else code and learning from them is what makes the open-source community as great as it is.
As for if the GPL will allow it, As I interpret it, for a software project to be GPLed it must contain only open-source software and contain all source code for all parts of the program. If this developer is not going to go opensource, then you could do a couple of things:
1. Close it up
2. On the download page, offer a download link to this gentlmens software, do not distibute it though. This might be pushing the limit of the GPL though.
3. Find an opensource alternative
4. Change license to something like the LGPL or the BSD licenses (Haven't looked much at those, so they might help)
I still belive in open-source and if you close it up, that would be a failure on our part. But sometimes in life things happen and we must adapt.
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Deuce {The Core}{Dev Blog}
Portable Software: Just the beginning.
Deuce
Portable Software: Just the beginning.
is I am getting less and less time at the moment and this DLL would allow me to finish the program NOW. If I decided not to do it I would have to drop Lapwing, something that I really don't want to do. I think I'll go for a BSD one as that seems to allow me to distribute open and non open source parts.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
(Note that I'm not a lawyer... this is just my understanding of the way these licenses work in the crash course I've gotten in them over the past couple years)
If you link either staticly or dynamically, then that is considered a whole work in the eyes of the GPL. So, if you have a GPLed program you can't link it to closed source DLLs.
BSD allows you to link open source code to closed. Of course, the resulting whole work would not be open source. But it could be linked and distributed as a single package.
Bear in mind that whichever route you take, you won't be able to distribute it via SourceForge. They only permit 100% open source projects under an OSI-approved license. So, you'll need to pay for bandwidth. Also, since it's not open source, you would not be able to make announcements about it or beta test requests here.
Incidentally, which DLL is it and who owns it? Mightn't we be able to convince him to open source it? I'd be happy to contact him.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
after some more discussions with him he's quite happy to open source his program but it seem that it uses the Microsoft Detours library,
http://research.microsoft.com/sn/detours/
Now, what if we simply put a link in the source saying that you can get the detours source form the correct website address, which you can, kind of like what John does with most of the apps.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
If it's using that library, and would have to be redistributed with it, then it couldn't be open sourced as a whole under an OSI approved license... at least from my understanding of it, which is unfortunate. I don't even know if it's legal to redistribute it with PortaPotty as they currently are since it is available under a "no-fee, click-through license for research, non-commercial, and non-production use". The actual license is even more restrictive:
You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in this License. Some purposes which can be non-commercial are teaching, academic research, public demonstrations and personal experimentation. You may also distribute this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on websites, that are intended to teach the use of the Software for academic or other non-commercial purposes.
You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, distributing the Software for use with commercial products or any other activity which purpose is to procure a commercial gain to you or others.
This would entail pretty much anything. Even if you had a website with ads on it, I think.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Would this be the PortaPotty DLL from Portable Freeware? Just curious.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Even if it takes a year to finish, we need to keep it open source.
/rant.
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R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
I think he should release it closed-source ASAP, and work on a version that can be completely open. That way we have something now, but can look forward to an open version in the future.
Vintage!
we couldn't host it on SourceForge.
Also, its just the morals, sorta thing.
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R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
to do. For the moment I'll set Lapwing up so that it uses third party DLLs as plugins. That way I can distribute it fine on Sourceforge. What I'll do then is have a list of DLLs that work with Lapwing, just portaPotty for the moment. That way there are no issues with that. In the mean time I'll continue to work on an open source version of the DLL so that in the long term we can go completely open source. You should see it out in the next couple of days, once the portaPotty DLL has been hosted.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Sounds like the best idea.
Now we just need some more C++ developers.
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R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
wait and see
You never know if I've been out recruiting 
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Can't wait.
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R McCue
PortaBlog Home and My Website
And before anyone complains about the grammar, I'm so jetlagged that my
hands aren't even in the same time zone...
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
two new C++ devs with about 15 years of experience between them, trust me things are going to start happening soon.
Yours
Steve Lamerton
Bad News
Good News
Other
~Lurk~
~Lurk~
We have something going on
Check the Libertà SourceForge developers page
*sshh*
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R McCue
Cube Games
People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were
the kind of people who didn't need people.
(Maskerade)
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."