[haiku-development] Re: INPUT / VOTE : --include-gpl-addons
- From: Urias McCullough <umccullough@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:34:16 -0700
On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Anoop Kumar
Narayanan<anoop.kn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Oops... Kinda got late in to the conversation...
> Anyway, here's what's needs to be done.
That's ok.
> 1. Default binary build of Haiku let it include GPL licensed products.
> Reason: Home users don't give a shit, my guess is that most users of
> Haiku are home users.
Actually initially, I suspect most users of Haiku are going to be
developers and OS geeks... but anyhow.
> 2. If a home user want to create a Comercial product, then ensure that
> when ever media-kit is added to the header file raise a preprocessor
> #warning during compilation, "Using GPL Code with Media-Kit, This will
> make your product GPL. If the warning needs to be removed, recompile
> Haiku without --include-gpl-options or -DINCLUDE_GPL_OPTIONS".
>
> 3. For allowing companies to use it: Create a Text file called
> Resell_Redistribute_Haiku.txt (also it would be wise to put it on the
> website) and mention in that, Haiku must be recompiled with out
> --include-gpl-addons option or -DINCLUDE_GPL_OPTIONS. And, when
> compiled without this option state which are the packages that will be
> disabled because of GPL. This would warn the Resellers or
> Redistributers of potential problems beforehand.
This was my originally thinking as well, except for #2, which I didn't
totally think through. I personally think that it would be
unreasonable to ask commercial software vendors who are writing Haiku
apps to recompile a non-GPL version of Haiku just so they can produce
an application whose resulting binary will probably be identical
either way (yes, i know that's a technicality... but I find this
absolutley moronic).
If that is going to be an issue, I think I'll switch my opinion to this:
1) Build Haiku with any GPL code disabled that would otherwise cause
Haiku libraries which do not contain any GPL code to then become GPL
2) Produce optional packages containing the GPL addons that a user can
install manually - or with a future "package manager".
As much as I think step 2 becomes a PITA, it even encourages someone
to write a non-GPL version of those addons in the future if they so
desire (hint hint!)
In the meantime, if we pursue the authors of those GPL parts and
request exclusions, perhaps we'll get lucky and they'll grant them to
us. If not, it's partially their loss, as their code will not be
included in an awesome OS!
On the other hand, perhaps we make two distributions of Haiku
avaialble: "Haiku alpha 1 Standard" and "Haiku alpha 1 GPL-E" (E can
stand for either "Enhanced" or "Encumbered" depending on your
viewpoint ;)
> You may not be able to avoid GPL completely, but a heads up would
> definitely make a lot of difference.
Yes, I agree that if we release any version of Haiku that contains GPL
libraries as a result of loadable plugins forcing us to, we *must*
notify the developers who might want to write applications somehow.
- Urias
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