bomber wrote:Why use GPL as all this file format would do is play into the hands of those wishing to scam unsuspecting punters. Who could charge for downloads of content containing 95% GPL and 5% dubious quality pay to play. As they could distribute both their Pay to Play files and GPL together, advertising it as a whole plane/content.
I don not think you have the licensing issues correct here.
If you use any GPL content within your code, then your code is a revised version of that GPL content. You are not allowed to re-lease this material (code/data) bundled in any other license except as GPL. This is call the copyleft provisions of the GPL
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.htmlViolations of this sort ARE very common in the Flightgear world. Per example one could look at the code in many non-GPL aircraft and one could see that copy/paste of Flightgear GPL core resources had been re-written verbatim (or copy/pasted). This is required for a plane to work ok in Flightgear. But these are clear violations of copyleft limitations. On the other hand, the owners of such code are those with the moral, economical and ethical authority to raise their flags, and address these issues with the non-GPL aircraft creators directly or through expensive court proceedings.
But that a violation or copyright infridgments exist in FG under failures to follow copyleft provisions do not means neither that's ok, nor that we would be unprotected if we decided to pursue a similar violation with code of ours.
To correct these I had suggested that our code be very modular and new code/data can be plugged in as a dynamic library. this is, you do not need to copy our/ the GPL content and bundle together with your restrictive non-GPL data. All you need to do is link it dynamically, and thus your data by remaining separate from that of the GPL code can still be plugged in a play appropriately.
Per example: think of this as if the FDMs were selectable thru a menu during runtime (just as liveries are).
Then you could have a menu where it says "select FDM".
You could make an FDM that uses the import/plugs interfaces we provide. But you do not need to copy any code from our GPL library into yours. Example your FDM specification could look like
Code: Select all
#a line like this could be loading dynamically the FDM library
#from the python Flight Simulator (pyFS)
#no code copying exist.
from pyFS import FDM
#a line like this could be creating an instatiation of an FDM that follows class inheritance of the pyFS FDM
myFDM=FDM()
##from here below the FDM specifications are your own code as it does not copy anything from the pyFS GPL or LGPL code. You are effectively plugged in, but not copied nor bundled-up
Now lets say our pyFS has a "select FDM" menu that may look like a list of available FDMs for the given aircraft on use.
So just as one can change on runtime the livery, one could change on runtime the FDM, so if one has installed a pay=ware FDM created as above, after agreeing with whatever the content provider would have indicated, the new installed FDM package would show up in the selectable FDM choices.
Select, and run. And then your new FDM is up and running. You keep flying.
bomber wrote:If Non commercial CC licence is used then this isn't so, and you put a barrier in the way of potential scammers. Whilst allowing genuine pay to play content developers to publish separate expansion packs for download, priced at the market value of only their work.
The desire would be to not inhibit initial generic CC work to be included in the initial download of any content. But see this as a starting point in which others could improve the work, WITHOUT having to go beg to any 'plane' Author for inclusion in any download. If someone comes along with a GPL content that's better then it's up to the user if he wished to run his simulation using it. If someone then comes along with a pay to play content file, it's then again up to the user to continue simulating with current files or upgrade. And if someone then comes along with a CC content that's getting rave reviews, why pay when it's free ?
as said above. Copyleft protections exist within GPL and LGPL.