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

[Argent Stonecutter]

On 2008-01-25, at 14:25, Rob Lanphier wrote:
> If you're aware of violations of our copyright, you should let us  
> know.  Send mail to licensing at lindenlab.com.

What I'm trying to figure out is what that actually means.

Following the build instructions for the SL viewer doesn't appear to  
produce a program that's redistributable under the GPL, even if the  
components that aren't open source are not transferred, even if it  
required the recipient to have their own copy of the SL client  
installed and only allowed you to connect to the SL grid.

> 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.

I'm not sure how. The LGPL would, but simply creating an exclusion  
for the specific components that SL depends on (such as Quicktime on  
Windows) wouldn't seem to have that effect.