[haiku-development] Re: INPUT / VOTE : --include-gpl-addons
- From: Anoop Kumar Narayanan <anoop.kn@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:31:50 +0530
I seemed to have overlooked the second aspect of commercial usage of Haiku.
1. Reseller or Redistributer of Haiku itself (Most likely going to
recompile, anyway)
2. Commercial Software Application vendor, Games creators etc (Will
use the most commonly available version): They would not want the GPL
version tagging along with their product.
So, Rather than making it an optional download, I would suggest
buiding the library twice, one with a libmediakit.so name and the
other with a libmediakit_gpl.so or something similar + the #warning.
This will give both groups of people an option.
Regards,
-Anoop
On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 5:04 AM, Urias McCullough<umccullough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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
>
>
Other related posts:
