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List:       gphoto-devel
Subject:    [gphoto-devel] Re: gPhoto2 licensing clarification (was Re: Introduction and Comments)
From:       Scott <scottf () gphoto ! net>
Date:       2000-08-24 17:05:00
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Richard Stallman wrote:

>     This is solved by the fact that the companies have the option of
>     "sponsoring" a developer to do the development and maintainence at
>     no-cost to the company.
> This might perhaps influence their decision, but we cannot rely on it
> to win them over.  The company may prefer keep the hardware interface
> secret and distribute only a binary driver.  We have seen this happen
> over and over with drivers for Linux and with proprietary X servers.

but they lose the benefit of no-cost development and maintainence. the
big factor here is maintanence because when gPhoto2 changes, the driver
is automatically updated for them. If they release only binary drivers,
they will need to do the work internally, and release subsequent
versions of their driver for all the platforms gPhoto2 supports (this is
a rather large pain-in-the-ass for them). 

They get to off-load driver development, and we get a Free driver.

> If that happens, we need a much bigger lever than the possibility of
> saving the salary of a driver maintainer.  That amount of money is
> probably not big enough to make enough difference.

The difference is that if gPhoto2 is a standard and they see a way to
save money in the end, they will do it. This has been proven recently
when i was contacted by a company to do such a thing.

> Exactly--that is the problem situation.
> We have one way to put pressure on them: by preventing gPhoto from
> supporting their cameras.  The strength of this pressure will increase
> year by year, along with the popularity of GNU/Linux.

But if the proprietary algorithm is their source of revenue, there is no
way they will open it up. They would be giving up their funding. 

Most of the software that has been "open sourced" recently (not
necessarily Free'd) has been software that does not generate a lot of
revenue on it's own (netscape for example, websphere personal, and
others). They were released so that the software has a forum for
development and use rather than having it wind up in the obscure
software graveyard in the end.

> But if gPhoto allows non-free drivers, that punctures the pipe that
> has to deliver the pressure.  They will write a non-free driver, and
> tell the public that "our camera does work with gPhoto; just install
> this driver!"  Presto, very little pressure falls on them.

The pressure comes in maintenance of the driver. Since gPhoto2 is an
open standard, it is subject to changes over time. They will not want to
try to keep up, but the idea of 1 driver for all platforms is way too
tempting to pass up. Their best case scenario is to Free the driver and
allow for external maintenance.

Just to show how much work would have to go into them maintaining the
driver:

- Make gPhoto2 API changes to the driver
- Test on all camera models the driver supports, including guaranteeing
that the little nuances of each cameras (something we've come to 'love'
:P) is supported and worked-around
- Compile drivers for all platforms that gPhoto2 supports
- Release the drivers, trying to distinguish between the versioning and
feature set of the several other drivers that have been released before.
Consider if we support 10 platforms, the revisions could easily add up
to over 100 distinct drivers for the camera manufacturer to maintain.

By Free'ing the driver:

- maintainer makes API changes to the driver which is in the original
"official" gPhoto2 source tree
- gPhoto2 sources are released
- Users on different platforms compile their own binaries, or we use a
server farm to compile the different versions.

The company does nothing in the process, other than provide
specifications to the camera, and a camera or two for testing. We get
the Free driver.

> This market pressure won't win every battle, but it will win some.  We
> should not fail to use it.

I agree that the way to win this over is step-by-step (to quote Bill
Murray from the movie "What About Bob?":  "baby steps.. baby steps..."
:P). The ways of traditional (popular) way of driver development won't
change over night. If they see that the benefits (cross platform, 1
driver, no-cost maintanence) far outweigh the negatives (traditional
closed-specification model), they will seek us out though.

I do not want closed-source drivers. That is very detrimental. For
gPhoto2 to be widely adopted and recognized though, non-Free
applications will need to be able to use it. 

> If we make the GNU system easier to use but we do not make OS/2 easier
> to use, that is fine--it gives people impetus to switch to GNU.
> Popularity is not our ultimate goal, but we do want to make GNU more
> popular.  And people who switch will gain freedom, since GNU is free
> and OS/2 is not.

In order to facilitate that switch though, their hardware will need to
be supported. As stated in my previous email, we would be branching out
in order to provide the support for the Free platforms.

>     Nope. this is the actual GUI toolkit used standard on OS/2. Not
>     considered a system library.
> We informally call it the "system library" exception, but the GPL does
> not actually use the words "system library".  So we need to look at
> the precise facts here to see whether this library qualifies for the
> exception.  Is it distributed with the OS/2 kernel?  Is it distributed
> with the OS/2 compiler?

Bart would be more qualified to answer that. I will contact him and see
about the situation.

> Meanwhile, is it possible to run gPhoto on OS/2 using GTK?  It ought
> to be possible at least in principle.  I don't know whether GTK
> supports OS/2, but it supports Windows, and OS/2 should be easier than
> Windows.

As mentioned in a previous email, gPhoto1 runs on OS/2. gPhoto2 also
runs, but we ran into the licensing issue.

> Are you arguing against the "system library" exception is a mistake?

Nope. You answered my question (regarding the trade-offs in order to
promote freedom).

The only thing that bothers me is that I see a trade-off in the case of
gPhoto2 as well. We allow for non-Free applications to use gPhoto2 on
all platforms, which in turn gains recognition from the camera
manufacturers, which in turn results in a Free driver for the Free
platforms. It benefits all computer users by having a Free driver and
takes away another reason to not use a Free platform.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-------------------- - - -   -    -
Scott Fritzinger		email: scottf@gphoto.net
gPhoto Project			  icq: 15884777
www.gphoto.net

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