[Bf-committers] extension clause

Dan Eicher dan at trollwerks.org
Wed Oct 6 20:20:01 CEST 2010


On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 9:07 AM, Campbell Barton <ideasman42 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ...snip...
>
2) do what nvidia do on linux. mix closed and open code but distribute
> separately. this means the violation only happens on the system where
> both are installed and running.
>
> That is merely tolerated by Linus et al. and is probably a violation of the
gpl from what I understand.

And, if you look into it a bit, they have a 'fine line' between public api
(good) and other kernel level calls (bad) which in blender would most likely
translate to py-api (good) and ctypes (bad).

Found an article from the recent WordPress gpl dustup that explains the
distinction pretty well --
http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/why-wordpress-themes-are-derivative-of-wordpress/.
It kind of seems from the FSF analysis of 'themes' --
http://wordpress.org/news/2009/07/themes-are-gpl-too/ -- that operators and
extensions would indeed be subject to the gpl since they are "intermingled
with and operated on by" blender code.

I'm also thinking that calling external renderers is probably good (vray
example) since they aren't "designed to run linked together in a shared
address space" but the actual blender exporter script is most likely subject
to the gpl.

But, as always, seek proper legal council.

Dan**


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