OK, Cees seems to know whereof he speaks, he certainly calls our concerns out clearly, I'm off to read the GNU Library license again.
I'd be curious if anyone has already clarified it's application to the reverse situation, i.e. our VR engine is fundamentally a (great big fat badtempered) plugin library for Squeak. We have no problem giving away any changes we make to squeak or any non-VR code, we just want to protect our copyrights on our core library plugin. Anyone seen how the LGPL has been applied to this, say in creating 3rd party commercial libraries for gnu compilers.
Re the death of IP in general, Cees, I'd tend to agree, software patents show how low we are sinking. On the other hand, one needs to make a living. And in general, if you give it away and ask them to pay if it works, you starve.
Mark
Mark Mullin mark@vibrant3d.com said:
I'd be curious if anyone has already clarified it's application to the reverse situation, i.e. our VR engine is fundamentally a (great big fat badtempered) plugin library for Squeak.
That centers around "If the Modified Software contains modifications, overwrites, replacements, deletions, additions, or ports to new platforms of: (1) [class lib], or (2) any part of the virtual machine, then [you have to share the source].
I would not call a plugin library an addition to the virtual machine - the VM is for me the SLANG stuff plus the platform glue, and I think that that's what is meant in the license.
I *think* that Apple did not mean to call a plugin library an addition to the virtual machine. However, a bad-tempered lawyer at Apple *could* construe your plugin library to be an addition to the virtual machine. Given the track record of big companies' legal teams smelling profit, blood, or just fun, I'd get a statement from Apple "we don't consider the vibrant 3D plugin as a blahblahblah"...
(even though I always had A's in business school for Law: I.A.N.A.L.)
I would not call a plugin library an addition to the virtual machine - the VM is for me the SLANG stuff plus the platform glue, and I think that that's what is meant in the license.
At the time the license was written, there was no such concept as a Squeak VM plugin. However, one of my major motivations for doing the VM plugins was in particular to be able to "access" proprietary code. In other words, a plugin is nothing but an optimized FFI interface (it really is). That's my way of thinking about it and I don't believe that anyone would consider some function called through FFI being an "addition to" the virtual machine.
I *think* that Apple did not mean to call a plugin library an addition to the virtual machine. However, a bad-tempered lawyer at Apple *could* construe your plugin library to be an addition to the virtual machine.
That reminds of a recent conversation with a lawyer. Asking "okay, so how can make this issue airtight" the response was "Heck, you are talking about law here! There is no such thing as 'airtight' in law. Companies can sue you and they _will_ sue you no matter what you do."
Given the track record of big companies' legal teams smelling profit, blood, or just fun, I'd get a statement from Apple "we don't consider the vibrant 3D plugin as a blahblahblah"...
Actually, having a number of companies ask for their permission might just raise their interest. Don't wake sleeping lions...
Cheers, - Andreas
Andreas Raab Andreas.Raab@gmx.de said:
[...]. That's my way of thinking about it and I don't believe that anyone would consider some function called through FFI being an "addition to" the virtual machine. [...] Actually, having a number of companies ask for their permission might just raise their interest. Don't wake sleeping lions...
Maybe it'd be an idea if SqC would ask Apple for a clarification here. I think it is a very important issue that we can make clear (in terms that a lawyer will accept) what is and what isn't allowed in the area of proprietary extensions - if you want to make a product a success, you need to be prepared for companies wanting to earn money with it. The plugin bit seems to be a big hole in the license...
(or maybe it would be enough to strike the term 'plugin' and call it 'fastFFI' ;-))
You may be right with your remark about now waking sleeping lawyers. I may be right with my remark about better being safe than sorry. WANL (we are not lawyers). IMHO, the fact that this arouses questions that I feel we cannot answer is a bug that should be fixed.
squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Andreas Raab -
cg＠home.cdegroot.com -
Mark Mullin