Subject:
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Re: License - again
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dev
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Date:
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Tue, 12 Dec 2000 22:33:42 GMT
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Viewed:
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1324 times
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Larry Pieniazek wrote:
> And that's my problem with GPL in a nutshell. It leaks into stuff.
Sometimes it's scary how in agreement we are...
> On the other hand I think it would suck big time to see Chris Dee or
> Franklin C or whoever prevented from using software that THEY HELPED CREATE
> because of their parts authoring because the author wanted a bazillion
> dollars. I'm very sympathetic to that viewpoint.
>
> zlib with a clause tacked on that says that any author that ever gets a part
> approved as part of the parts authoring/voting process is entitled to a free
> copy (except for media charges) of any software that uses the lib??? How
> about that?
>
> IANAL so I dunno if that's very watertight or not.
A differentiation which I think would also be valuable to make is a
differentiation between any sort of converter program which uses the
definition of the parts in the library to create an editable file in a
new format (say something which converted a LDraw .DAT into a CAD file),
and one which doesn't actually use the library definition, but just
takes the model build from parts in one library, and renders it into a
model built with parts in another library. TLC's efforts would be a
potential example. Presumably TLC already has a CAD library definining
at a minimum every currently produced part (and likely every part they
still have molds for, and probably many others). If they produced a
program which used that library, they could make a converter which would
recognize LDraw part names and convert a .DAT to use their library and
file format. The resulting model file of course depends relatively
little on the efforts of the parts and library designers (other than the
fact that their effort made the model being converted possible to
render). I don't think we would want to force them to give a free copy
of their program to every parts designer in such a case.
What I think we do want to cover is some future product which is able to
import LDraw files, parts definitions and all.
Of course all of my input is just input from a potential future
customer. I have not used any of the LDraw family of programs other than
to view a few files. One thing I will say is that perhaps part of my
reason for not wanting to totally torpedo commerical efforts in this
area is that I have not found an LDraw family application which was
sufficiently easy to get going and use (not even to view files). Now I'm
sure if I worked at it a little, I could get somewhere, but nothing has
just rolled out as trivial to use. A commercial program with any hope of
success would have to be trivial to install, at least to be used as a
viewer.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: License - again
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| "Frank Filz" <ffilz@mindspring.com> wrote in message news:3A36A7C6.2C67@m...ing.com... MAJOR SNIPPAGE: (...) Heh... I kinda like the way that sounds :-) Good ideas, BTW, Frank. -- Tim Courtney - tim@zacktron.com (URL) - Centralized LDraw Resources (...) (24 years ago, 12-Dec-00, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: License - again
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| (...) Right. And that's my problem with GPL in a nutshell. It leaks into stuff. Now, we've reasonably outlined how the parts license doesn't leak into stuff like published designs, renderings, instruction sets, etc. But if licensing the parts (...) (24 years ago, 12-Dec-00, to lugnet.cad.dev)
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