[opensource-dev] FAQ posted for Third Party Viewer Policy

[Henri Beauchamp]

On Sun, 28 Feb 2010 09:34:55 +0100, Marine Kelley wrote:

> I'd like to remind people of my proposed solution, back when LL asked
> everyone about how to set their third party viewer policy, a few months ago.
> I had proposed to make it so that only viewers built on a LL-owned dedicated
> machine would be accepted. Such binaries would be the result of the build of
> committed sources,

This might sound good, but in fact it would be close to impossible, and
would make TPV developpers unable to control the building envirnonment,
something crucial.
For example, I build my Linux viewers on a Mandriva 2007 distro, so that
the glibc libraries are compatible even with old distros. I also have to
make a lot of manual adjustements within VS2055 in order to build the Windows
version of the Cool SL Viewer v1.19.2 (which is based on v1.19.0.5 LL's
viewer and was originally coded to build with VS2003). This viewer also
can't be built automatically like v1.23 and cmake...
What also, about devs who provide PPC MacOS builds ?...

I'm sorry, but this can't work for the Cool SL Viewer...

> with the addition of a small code (unknown to the devs of
> the viewer) that would transfer a hash to the grid upon connecting (and
> possibly regularly afterward while online).

This is a BIG no-no... The GPL doesn't allow this in the first place
since the sources as made openly available must compile exactly to the
published binary on anyone's machine.

Sorry, Marine, but I vote against your proposal.

Henri.