[Bf-committers] extension clause

Matt Ebb matt at mke3.net
Wed Oct 6 23:01:09 CEST 2010


On 07/10/2010, at 05:20 , Dan Eicher wrote:

> 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.

I think the VRay query is not related to use of python per se, but potentially what would happen with a C or C++ RNA API/Render API, which could be used like a 'normal' render plugin in other software, without having to go through python.


On 07/10/2010, at 00:23 , Roger Wickes wrote:

> i think the person who made that statement is wrong. Any program 
> needs an OS to "work", yet you can license your program differently from
> the way the OS is licensed. The API is the dividing line. If you dance on the
> outside of the API, your stuff is yours. 

Unfortunately, the GPL itself doesn't seem so clear on this. And in many cases I think it's quite silly and doesn't really do anything to preserve the open-ness of an application.


On 07/10/2010, at 03:07 , Campbell Barton wrote:

> AFAIK there are a few ways...
> 1) run your closed source code in a separate process and have your own
> opensouce module communicate with it (pipes, sockets, shared-mem).
> 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.

This is kinda funny to me, in that awkward solutions like this would seem more compliant with 'the letter of the law', when in effect its really the same end result, without any differing levels of open-ness in blender itself. It seems to me that criteria like shared address space/dlopen/etc are a bit arbitrary in deciding whether its a single program, or two, communicating via an API. I suspect if such a case went to court, the question would be judged more on that 'is it a modified single program' issue, rather than 'does it satisfy these arbitrary technical requirements via obtuse workarounds'. AFAIK this part hasn't been tested in court.

Personally I'd just go and do what you want anyway, especially if as you say it's not a modification to Blender itself. I don't think any blender developers will sue you - I promise not to, at least ;)

Matt


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