[sldev] Proprietary dependencies (Re: Compile as installer)

[Rob Lanphier]

(sorry, I meant to change the subject line on my first message).

On 1/25/08 12:12 PM, Argent Stonecutter wrote:
> On 2008-01-25, at 13:45, Rob Lanphier wrote:
>> Having proprietary libraries in there is not part of any nefarious 
>> plan to get more commercial licensees, though it does create that 
>> pressure for licensees.  We haven't been very aggressive about 
>> removing proprietary dependencies, and might very well add more in 
>> the future.  There's a lot of disagreement here at Linden Lab about 
>> just how much we should worry about this problem, with one side 
>> arguing much as you do here, and the other side arguing that we have 
>> an obligation to our user base to provide the best features for the 
>> price, regardless of whether or not it passes an open source purity 
>> test.
>
> I'm not concerned with it passing an open-source purity test, I'm 
> concerned with the difference between Linden Labs copyright and the 
> actual real-world terms they are enforcing.

If you're aware of violations of our copyright, you should let us know.  
Send mail to licensing at lindenlab.com.

> So there's a third option: rather than remove the commercial 
> libraries, modify the license to explicitly allow them. You could use 
> the LGPL, or you could extend the existing exception or add a new 
> exception to your license to permit third party redistribution of a 
> client that links against the libraries that you distribute with SL 
> (subject, of course, to whatever restrictions the licenses on those 
> libraries enforce). The GPL doesn't permit this, which is why you 
> would need to modify it, but since you've already done so once that 
> shouldn't be out of the question.
>
> That would simply make the current de-facto situation explicitly 
> recognized in the open source client license.

The problem with that is that it gives someone the opportunity to create 
a proprietary competitor to Second Life without contributing anything 
back (financially or to the ecosystem), and would probably be a pretty 
reckless for us to do business-wise given our market position.  Our 
current model forces one or the other, and doesn't prohibit the creation 
of a purely open source viewer (in fact, encourages it). 

Rob

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