[Lindsayts]

Thanks for the the reply Matej I apreciate the limited resources the team has (and also they have lives to live) so I will understand any priorities they have on there work. Unfortunately I cannot contribute code directly to the project as any code I write comes under the GPL. This is the most used licence with Linux and is incompatible with the OR licence in a major way. Due to this licence incompatibilty I have not and will not study the OR code in detail, this limits what I can do. I have discussed this licencing issue with the GPL people and they said there was little I could do unless I completely changed my philisophical outlook on life.
The code example given in a prevous post was after around a 10 minute study of the relevent file so there is a distinct possibilty it would not work.

If copperpen will read this I do not know but.........

The statement "tractive effort = power" is NOT correct, I have found this is a VERY common missconseption amongst railway people. For some idea of the differnce between the two physical properties I will use this example. A locomotive may have a tractive effort of say 25,000lbs at 60mph and a TE of 50,000lbs at 30 mph. The tractive effort is clearly double at the lower speed, the power though used in both cases is the SAME it being 4000bhp. The loco is NOT more powerful at the slower speed inspite of the tractive effort being higher.

Lindsay

[Genma Saotome]

Lindsayts, on 21 January 2013 - 11:27 AM, said:

Unfortunately I cannot contribute code directly to the project as any code I write comes under the GPL.

If you can, could you explain the differences between the GPL license you follow and whichever of the Creative Commons licenses is most similar?

[Lindsayts]

Its not the difference between the GPL and other creative commons licences, for me in the current situation its the differnce between the GPL and the licence that OR is using.
Below is the relevent section of the GPL, Note GPL V1 is used, there are three versions any developer is free to chose which version they wish to use.

The major point of difference is that the OR licence restricts modifaction and distribution and I will NOT allow any work of mine to be so restricted. One must apreciate that different people may have different values, it does not make either right or wrong just different.

I have spent a good deal of effort trying to find away around the current situation but have been told there is little hope unless one side or the other changes there stance, which is NOT going to happen.

Lindsay

Part of GPL version 1.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source
code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and
appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and
disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this
General Public License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any
other recipients of the Program a copy of this General Public License
along with the Program. You may charge a fee for the physical act of
transferring a copy.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of
it, and copy and distribute such modifications under the terms of Paragraph
1 above, provided that you also do the following:

a) cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that
you changed the files and the date of any change; and

:sweatingbullets: cause the whole of any work that you distribute or publish, that
in whole or in part contains the Program or any part thereof, either
with or without modifications, to be licensed at no charge to all
third parties under the terms of this General Public License (except
that you may choose to grant warranty protection to some or all
third parties, at your option).

c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when
run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use
in the simplest and most usual way, to print or display an
announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice
that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a
warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these
conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this General
Public License.

d) You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a
copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in
exchange for a fee.

Mere aggregation of another independent work with the Program (or its
derivative) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring
the other work under the scope of these terms.
^L
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a portion or derivative of
it, under Paragraph 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of
Paragraphs 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable
source code, which must be distributed under the terms of
Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,

:bigboss: accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party free (except for a nominal charge
for the cost of distribution) a complete machine-readable copy of the
corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of
Paragraphs 1 and 2 above; or,

c) accompany it with the information you received as to where the
corresponding source code may be obtained. (This alternative is
allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you
received the program in object code or executable form alone.)

Source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making
modifications to it. For an executable file, complete source code means
all the source code for all modules it contains; but, as a special
exception, it need not include source code for modules which are standard
libraries that accompany the operating system on which the executable
file runs, or for standard header files or definitions files that
accompany that operating system.

[Lindsayts]

Previous attempts to discuss open source as it applies in the Linux world with MSTS developers has resulted in the topic VERY rapidly decending into open warfare. I will repeat one needs to understand not everyone has the same philosphy or values, It does NOT make either side right or wrong just different. It appears so far I have never found an MSTS developer that can see that point.

Sadly its very likely in the end I will have to withdraw from any work in or around OR (I have infact taken this action with MSTS), which is a pity as the developers are doing good work and will end up with an excellent sim.

Lindsay

[Genma Saotome]

Lindsayts, on 21 January 2013 - 10:10 PM, said:

Previous attempts to discuss open source as it applies in the Linux world with MSTS developers has resulted in the topic VERY rapidly descending into open warfare.

I'm not looking to stir up any trouble; I happened upon the creative commons license the other day and was wondering how it differs w/ GPL, that's all.

As for Open Rails, I'm not in any position to say with certainly one way or the other if the license terms will ever change. Not my call, maybe not even a chance to vote. I know there is some reservation about somebody picking it up, changing the logo on the start screen, and selling it on eBay. Of a more practical nature, there is the question of how does one move forward w/ developing standard features in the core while, at the same time, allowing forked versions. Forked versions of what? The core or genuinely original, new features? Fixing a bug is one thing but replacing whole sections w/ disagreeable functionality is another. I suppose one way to describe it is with a question: What does it mean to let go... in part... in whole? At least that's a question for me that I'd like answered.

If you want to reply, go ahead. If you do, I'm likely to split off these posts into their own thread as we're well off-topic re: physics.

[cjakeman]

Lindsayts, on 21 January 2013 - 10:10 PM, said:

Sadly its very likely in the end I will have to withdraw from any work in or around OR, which is a pity as the developers are doing good work and will end up with an excellent sim.

I'm sympathetic to your principles (once took students to hear Richard Stallman speak) and who knows how OR will end up.

You can apply whatever licence you wish to OR-specific content, of course.

Does the GPL allow a plug-in to work with proprietary code? I'm thinking about APIs for OR. For example, instead of providing for every type of cab instrument (we added acceleration recently and BillionRail wants to use an airflow meter), we should be thinking of an API so that anyone can develop any instrument independently.

What do you think?

[cjakeman]

cjakeman, on 21 January 2013 - 11:49 PM, said:

Does the GPL allow a plug-in to work with proprietary code?

Did some lunch-time research and, according to the GPL FAQ, the answer is "yes".

Would that be a suitable way forward?

[Lindsayts]

cjakeman, on 22 January 2013 - 04:33 AM, said:

Did some lunch-time research and, according to the GPL FAQ, the answer is "yes".

That is correct, an excelent example is the proprietry drivers for the graphics cards made by both Nvidia and AMD (ATI). An important point to consider here is the program interface (the API) HAS to be true open source, the GPL NOT allowing any restriction in the distribution of code and any externel program usually needs access to internel data structures. The way AMD handles this is they publish the API code for there graphics cards using a sort of combined licence, ie the api code is not GPL or proprietry, this allows AMD to distrubute it at there will. That is there is a Linux specific layer of programming between the driver and the kernels internel data structures, under the GPL if you use these data stuctures in your externel program THEN it is part of tke kernel and the source MUST be published.
Note, there is the LGPL, I THINK (I am not sure here) this licence (Lesser Gnu Public Licence) was created to allow commercial concerns to publish closed source libraries within LInux, ie API's, without getting in to trouble. Important I have not studied the LGPL at all, it may be worth looking into.

[Lindsayts]

Much thanks for the creation of this thread, one hopes it will remain civilised, I have wished for ages to discuss licensing issues but have been unable to do so due the VERY sensitive nature of the subject.

My main concern comes from what I will call "no sucession plan" on the part of most MSTS developers. That they spend in most cases thousands of hours creating items (the Adeliade and SE route took 6000 hours) and all this will end up unknown and down the drain because of restrictive licensing. OR is essentially the same a group of developers have spent a vast amount of time developing an excellent sim and if they all get hit by a truck tomorrow thats effectively the end.
There is plenty of good work in Australia well and truly heading in this direction and I think this is a major tragedy for the developers concerned.

I am not going to say I am going to create any world beating items but any I wish to create I would like to give these items the best chance of survival in the wild. The GPL was created with this specfic issue in mind its whole thrust is make the software truly free.

In the end though the OR developers (and anyone else) must do what they are happy with by following there own principles, I believe one would hope that all train sim developers would consider there items being avaible far into the future, ie more than a few years, for this they must be able to be updated.

Lindsay

[Genma Saotome]

I too believe there is a problem with licensing in our hobby being too strict -- and I admit that I'm just as guilty as the next guy. I can see the sense in wanting to ensure nobody passes your own work off as theirs alone; I can also understand why many people are adverse to letting their work be used in payware. I don't want to get into the reasons why... I accept in full that whatever reasons have been put forward are done so because that is exactly what the person wants and so there is no reason to re-hash old arguments.

Where it starts to become problematic, I think, is what happens some years down the road... when the author drops out of the hobby (or worse, has died). Most everyone continues to respect the original license, something I do encourage, but what if the person doesn't care anymore -- or in terms of being dead, can't care anymore? His work is forever tied up by the original terms. Perhaps that's right and proper -- it is what the author originally wanted and absent alternative instructions, it's what we should be guided by.

But consider an alternative idea: What if source files were held in an accessible library with each author having strictly private, unfettered access to their own work for 3 or perhaps 5 years with the condition that he must periodically renew that term. Failing to do so (for whatever reason) would release the files to the public BUT with attribution to the author. It could be done under one of the public reuse licenses, either the GPL or CC. Anybody that subsequently uses the source is obliged to indicate who the original author(s) are, to document what he himself has added, and where the original files can be obtained. IOW a process for a user controlled, eventual release of the source files.

I've no idea if anyone would actually "sign up" for something like that. Even if some do I'd be surprised if lots did. It's just that there is a whole lot of stuff that has been made over the last 10-12 years that could be taken up again, improved in some way, and re-released in an updated form.

Thoughts?