[Bf-committers] extension clause

David Jeske davidj at gmail.com
Mon Nov 22 17:02:38 CET 2010


On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Dan Eicher <dan at trollwerks.org> wrote:

> >
> > I believe it's important to many users (especially, but not limited to
> > corporate users) to have a secondary 'proprietary plugin market',
>


> > That option has been discussed and all but approved, the only hitch is
> the
> plugin writers also have to write and maintain the BSD (or whatever) api
> shim code.
>

How is legally viable to make a capable BSD licensed API with the code under
the GPL? The shim would be dependent on material details of the Blender
design and internals. It would probably expose many of those details (such
as UI panels, RNA) As a result, the shim should be under the GPL, and as a
result, the extensions should be under the GPL.

During this discussion we talked about the license extension exception. This
applies to Blender embedding Python, effectively making it a 'library
exception'. Python was a pre-existing library which is not-GPL, and thus is
covered under the GPL library exception clause. Python does not depend on
any details of blender. In fact, it's the other way around, Blender depends
on Python.  If I understand correctly, in order to apply this license
exception, the authors of all those details (UI, RNA) would need to approve
the 'exception' of the shim-library, and they would need to depend on it's
details, not the other way around.

It's interesting to note that if Blender wanted to be non-GPL, and Python
was GPL, it wouldn't be legal to embed it into Blender. One of the biggest
benefits of Python is that it can be linked with anything without license
restriction. It's shown up in all kinda of software, free and commercial,
and been a stronger open-source project for it.

Ton wrote....
> Basically there are two cases we can investigate:
>
> 1) Allow anyone to extend Blender, linked dynamically with scripts or
> libraries or plugins
> 2) Allow anyone to dynamically link in Blender libraries in their own
> programs
>
> The LGPL will only allow the latter. For the first we have to devise
> an extension clause (if we want to stick to GPL).

The LGPL would allow either. In order for someone to write a non-LGPL
plugin, their code must depend on details of the LGPL code, and "link
against" the LGPL code, both of which are allowed by the LGPL.

When you say "extension clause" are you referring to authoring a
unique-to-Blender extension clause which deviates from the GPL? or using the
GPL Library Exception provisions?  As I wrote above, in order for the
library-exception clause to allow closed-source extensions, Blender would
need to carve bunch of existing code into a "ui and rna" library, which is
put under a a less restrictive license and is then becomes the library
exception. This is the route GIMP took. They used the LGPL for that library,
since the LGPL allows you to link it into closed source without
contamination. Using a less restrictive license would obviously also work.

I don't see solid comfortable legal ground for claiming that "all 3rd party
extensions" are "after the fact" library exceptions, using the GPL's library
exception clause. If this is the route you intend, it would help
substantially if you could get FSF to publish a specific position on this
direction.

It's kind of funny how people/companies are willing to contribute code to
> (and use) Linux more than all the BSD put together yet Linux has a more
> restrictive license. You'd think they would all be scared away from the GPL
> and go towards a license where they don't have to worry about having their
> code 'virally' infected or 'lost' if they (accidently or otherwise)
> distribute it. But they don't which IMHO says a lot.
>

Linux can be extended by writing applications. Those applications do not sit
in the same address-space as the Linux kernel, and they compile against
glibc and other libraries, not the kernel itself. No GPL contamination.  All
that is required for the community to adopt a solution is for that solution
to have critical mass and have a license compatible with them building and
distributing anything they want, with any license they want. Linux provides
this. A GPL Blender does not.


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