GPL license discussion & Blender Forks (E-Cycles or any other fork)

@SpookyDoom I think it’s a great question.

But keep in mind that the dutys and rights of the GPL comes into play as soon as the software has been distributed publicly, but the FSF and the GPL recognise that an internal company distribution has NOT been made public, hence the GPL terms don’t come into play, so the answer would be that no, the company has rights to keep the software as private and internally they can apply the terms they want to.

GPL comes when it has been made public, either by selling and distributing it by any means, or by distributing it for free, but using inside a company is not making it Public, so the GPL don’t affects this situation.

The key thing here is “public” :slight_smile:

P.S.: thanks for your thanks hahaha you are welcome :slight_smile: maybe you didn’t want me to answer this, if that’s the case tell me and I’ll delete the answer and allow others to expose their point of views without interfeering, I said a lot of things here already :slight_smile:

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Ah - that’s good to keep in mind for the future. Thanks.

Also, I absolutely want you to answer. I just want to make sure that people don’t think I need the answer from you exclusively :smiley:

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Keep in mind that I’m not a GPL expert or anything, I just contacted the FSF to clarify some points, they are easy to contact fro this type of inquiries, just email them and they will straight forward answer you :slight_smile:

The things you said so far and the answers you got from the FSF match pretty much with what I have gathered about the GPL over the years. So I assume your opinion to be highly likely to be at least in the correct ballpark. :wink:

Should this ever become a real issue I’d consult legal advice anyways. Or I’d probably be working for people who do it themlseves. :smiley:

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AFAIK, E-Cycles doesn’t bundle its source code but is this *written offer" provided ?

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I have no idea, could be good if you ask about this to the author.

Bundling is not necessary, just some way to download the source code would be sufficient.

It has previously been mentioned that the source code is available on the Blender Market. I would be surprised if this wasn’t the case on Gumroad. At the very least, I don’t see a reason for this sort of speculation.

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What has been stated is the Blender Market has the source not that it’s being offered to customers, also, do you know that for a fact? There is nothing wrong in asking and wanting to know if everything is right and if the license is being respected, specially now that some things got clarified

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It should be clear from my message that I don’t know it for a fact.

The only reason why I responded is because from my point of view, it is not just a question. Just asking a question would be: Does someone know how they provide the source code? The way it was described appears potentially loaded in my opinion.

I just had checked eCycles on the Blender Market. I cannot find the source code in the files and I cannot find the written offer. But it could be mistaken since there are many download files and I am not certain where to look for the written offer. I will ask the author.

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Thank you for checking. I am sure it’s just an omission.

I have just asked Mathieu on the E-Cycles thread.

Things just got clarified, so probably this was a missunderstanding of the GPL, and Mathieu will need some time to adjust things to comply with the GPL requirements.

@xan2622 I saw your question in Blender Artists and I want to punctualize one thing:

We should always have in mind two situations:

1.- The source code is packed or provided together with the binary, so you download the zip file form the fork and it includes the source, or you download the zip file from the fork and you also have a second zip with the source available.
In that case only the persons that have direct access to the binary have access to the source code, and if they share the binary with anyone, they are responsibles of giving the binary together with the source code.
That’s usually uncomfortable because at each release you will ahve to pack and upload the whole source code again and again, so the most comfy way of sharing the source code is the second one:

2.- You provide a written offer on how to get the source code, for example you explain that the source code is available on github.
In this case since the original receiver don’t have the source code directly provided together with the binary, what that receiver has is a written offer with the explanation, and when that user (A) shares the binary with another user (B), he must provide B with the written offer.
Then B, without being a customer of D (developer) can go to D and ask for the source code or download it as explained in the written offer.

So the source code is not only available to customers of D, but to any binary user, that can be a customer of D or not, and depending on how the binary was distributed the responsibility of providing such source code relies on D or A :slight_smile:

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I think it is important that these license discussions happen. It is frustrating to see that there is still a lot of confusion. Hopefully, this discussion will lead to more clarity.

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My 2 cents: Problem is that this discussion will not travel far outside of this forum.

I know legal texts are complex on purpose so that everything is as clear as possible. I am a fan of also providing a simple version for everybody, though. Something that explains what a paragraph is about in one or two short sentences. It just has to be stated: The short lines are not the full text. They represent it but in legal doubt - read the whole thing or ask a lawyer.

If the GPL contained a short paragraph that states just what we discussed here - if EVERY GLP included that paragraph then that would eliminate a lot of doubt already.

I remember that Machin3 complained on Twitter about people pirating DecalMachine. People pulled out their pitchforks and torches. Some said: It’s legal. Ultimately Ton himself stepped in and wrote: IT’s not pirating. That’s what the contract says. People are allowed to do it. Most just chose not to.

It came to no conclusion because the people split in half between: “It’s still pirating if you rob someone of their well deserved cash” and “No - it’s legal so you have it in written form: No pirating here”

If the GPL included an easy to read and understand paragraph in short form and clear and concise language, I feel it might be able to eliminate a large percentage of the things where people may just think they know something about something they’ve heared somewhere.
For more in depth arguments there would still be the long form legal GLP licence text.

Agreed. But should Gary make the request for the sources to Alice then the onus is on Alice to go and get the source from Bob to deliver it to Gary as per his right to receive it following that request.

If Bob distributes the binary (selling or not, it does not matter) he MUST provide the sources (offer) to Alice, in form of source itself, or in form of written offer.
After that two situations happen if Alice gives the binary to Gary:

  • If the binary was distributed WITH the sources, then Alice is responsible of providing Gary the sources, and he has not right to ask Bob the sources.

  • If the binary was distributed WITHOUT the sources, but WITH the written offer, then Gary has the right to, following the procedure provided in the written offer, ask Bob for the sources.

What cannot be in any case is to distribute the Binary WITHOUT the sources OR WITHOUT the Written Offer, and in any of the two situations the sources are available for a third party that does not know Gary at all, that’s the GPL :slight_smile:

Well in this case there is the FAQ but a lot of people question the FAQ itself, or some things are not fully clear, that’s why I wrote to the FSF, to clarify some important points, it’s our responsibility to make things clear.

I want to make clear that anyone that wants the email I received from the FSF can ask me for it, I will forward them this email, with the information of the person that answered me, all the questions etc… just a plain clean forward.

Many people were wrong in the past, but I don’t understand why people just interprets things and don’t ask the FSF via email or other ways.

I think that one of the most important things here is:

The source code must be offered in one of the ways the
GPL requires.

It is not the responsibility of the recipient to ask for the source. It
is the responsibility of the entity doing the distribution to offer the
source as per the terms of the GPL, or be in violation of the license.

Totally agree, but a solid ground to start properly understanding the license always help :slight_smile:

I think that in this case people are confusing the “legallity” with the “ethicallity” or “morallity”, the first is as it’s stated in the license are after that (or before that, depends on how you understand it) in the law, the second and the third one are subjective positions that are a matter of a different discussion IMHO, but are not part of the license.

If a developer develops something under the GPL, it’s because that developer decides it, and that developer should know the license, the dutys and right of the developer and the users :slight_smile:

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My reply was specifically to the quoted part, but I should indeed have specified that I assumed Bob to have offered the source to Alice, but not the written promise.

That is Alice purchased access from Bob and downloaded the binary, ignoring the download link to the source. Then distributed the binary also to Gary, who then asked for sources.

In this case the onus is on Alice to go back and download, then provide the source to Gary.

Gary can also go on and email Bob asking for the source and Bob can reply that the source download was provided the same way as the binary. Go get it there.

Which leaves Gary with either the choice to buy the access via the store or still go back and ask Alice. Alice provided him with the binary without the written promise so she has to provide the source.

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Yep, exactly :slight_smile:

This is irrelevant. The person made an informed decision to base their work on code written by others and made available as free software. They could have created something from scratch, or chosen to base their work on code released under a different license which allowed them to release their modifications without also providing access to the source code for those modifications.

What you are suggesting is tantamount to me taking the millions of lines of Linux kernel source code, adding some clever enhancement, and then selling the modified kernel only in binary form without releasing the source code for my modifications - something that could not exist without the millions of lines of code, written by thousands of contributors, given freely to all.

Would that seem reasonable to you? Would you be jumping to my defence, protecting me from any who would be so terrible as to deprive me of my income, those who would demand that I abide by the license terms of the for the software code I have based my work on, who demand that I should act in accordance to the spirit of what free software is all about?

Putting it bluntly, I’ll take the community of free software creators over the community of free software parasites any day of the week!

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