RSS/Atom feed Twitter
Site is read-only, email is disabled

availibility of Gobe source code

This discussion is connected to the gimp-developer-list.gnome.org mailing list which is provided by the GIMP developers and not related to gimpusers.com.

This is a read-only list on gimpusers.com so this discussion thread is read-only, too.

6 of 6 messages available
Toggle history

Please log in to manage your subscriptions.

availibility of Gobe source code Sven Neumann 28 Mar 11:02
  availibility of Gobe source code Branko Collin 28 Mar 11:59
   availibility of Gobe source code Sven Neumann 28 Mar 12:35
    availibility of Gobe source code Branko Collin 28 Mar 23:06
   availibility of Gobe source code Christopher Curtis 29 Mar 04:26
    availibility of Gobe source code Sven Neumann 29 Mar 08:54
Sven Neumann
2002-03-28 11:02:54 UTC (about 22 years ago)

availibility of Gobe source code

Hi,

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

Salut, Sven

Branko Collin
2002-03-28 11:59:51 UTC (about 22 years ago)

availibility of Gobe source code

On 28 Mar 2002, at 11:02, Sven Neumann wrote:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

(zblt... acronym overload...)

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

Sven Neumann
2002-03-28 12:35:55 UTC (about 22 years ago)

availibility of Gobe source code

Hi,

"Branko Collin" writes:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

(zblt... acronym overload...)

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

I think the license could indeed be interpreted in that way. Actually a couple of commercial applications showed up over the years that definitely (or most probably) use GIMP code to some extent. This is at least annoying and I wonder if we should start to defend our licence. On the other hand we might be interested in establishing the GIMP plug-in protocol and could even benefit from commercial apps supporting it.

Salut, Sven

Branko Collin
2002-03-28 23:06:39 UTC (about 22 years ago)

availibility of Gobe source code

On 28 Mar 2002, at 12:35, Sven Neumann wrote:

"Branko Collin" writes:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

(zblt... acronym overload...)

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

I think the license could indeed be interpreted in that way. Actually a couple of commercial applications showed up over the years that definitely (or most probably) use GIMP code to some extent. This is at least annoying and I wonder if we should start to defend our licence. On the other hand we might be interested in establishing the GIMP plug-in protocol and could even benefit from commercial apps supporting it.

I find that hard to judge. For all we know, these 'lost' plug-ins cost us our competitive edge, equalling less users, equalling less developers. Is that important? I don't know.

Anyway, just asking the FSF what's up with this won't mean they start sueing right away. But the FSF do have the legal knowledge that we probably lack.

Christopher Curtis
2002-03-29 04:26:27 UTC (about 22 years ago)

availibility of Gobe source code

On Thu, 2002-03-28 at 05:59, Branko Collin wrote:

On 28 Mar 2002, at 11:02, Sven Neumann wrote:

I heard that Gobe Productive (http://www.gobe.com/) ships with plug-ins based on source code from The GIMP and sent them a letter asking for source code. I'm forwarding their answer here...

IANAL, so IMO these are the things you should run by the FSF, just to make sure.

Specifically, I wonder if using GPL'ed plug-ins cause the main app to become GPL'ed.

Similarly, IANAL, but the whole debate surrounding these types of issues is what is it that constitutes "linking". RMS has made it clear (as I recall) that simply calling a GPL program does not constitute linking. So you can run ``system( "cp file1 file2" );'' without violating the GPL if the 'cp' program is covered by the GPL. You cannot, however, do something like ``dlopen( "/bin/cp" );''

Now, what has been done with the plugins? To my best understanding (and please consult the FSF), if the plugin can run as a standalone app, they are OK. If the plugin is being dlopened or otherwise "link"ed into the program, they are in violation of the GPL. If they modified the plugins to run as standalone programs, and made these changes available under the GPL as required by the GPL, they may have gotten away with it.

Unfair, but not a violation. GPL 2 is not bulletproof (especially with anything web-based and the "distribution" clause). Naturally, I've done no research, and haven't even looked at their ZIPped mods, and know little about GIMP internals, but that won't stop me from giving an uninformed opinion!!!

Either way, I hope everything can be resolved amicably ...

Cheers, Chris

Sven Neumann
2002-03-29 08:54:29 UTC (about 22 years ago)

availibility of Gobe source code

Hi,

Christopher Curtis writes:

Similarly, IANAL, but the whole debate surrounding these types of issues is what is it that constitutes "linking". RMS has made it clear (as I recall) that simply calling a GPL program does not constitute linking. So you can run ``system( "cp file1 file2" );'' without violating the GPL if the 'cp' program is covered by the GPL. You cannot, however, do something like ``dlopen( "/bin/cp" );''

Now, what has been done with the plugins? To my best understanding (and please consult the FSF), if the plugin can run as a standalone app, they are OK. If the plugin is being dlopened or otherwise "link"ed into the program, they are in violation of the GPL. If they modified the plugins to run as standalone programs, and made these changes available under the GPL as required by the GPL, they may have gotten away with it.

actually the situation is even worse with GIMP plug-ins since the intent of our licensing model (GPL core, LGPL libgimp) is to explicitely allow the possibility of closed-source plug-ins. Such a plug-in would link against LGPL'ed libgimp code and communicate with the GPL'ed core via pipes and shared memory segments. This heavy use of IPC makes it difficult to decide whether this is more similar to 'system' or 'dlopen' to stay with your example. Any company that would try its luck with a commercial GIMP plug-in risks to violate the GPL. This probably explains why no such plug-ins exist yet (afaik).

Salut, Sven