[Swftools-common] License for commercial desktop software and/or website one

[Chris Pugh]

2009/7/27 Ahmad ElDardiry <address@hidden>:
> السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته
> May peace and Allah Mercy and Blessings be upon you,
>
> Chris Pugh,
> "...else you are breaking the stringent terms of the GPL"

> Why do you think I'm asking these questions here for ?

My sentence was simply a tag line to the response given to you
by Matthias, and meant to qualify his statement.   Where is the
difficulty in your comprehension?

The GPL is, in effect, a Copyright License.  When Matthas created
SWFTools, he made it Open Source, releasing under the GPL,  i.e.
showing anyone who was interested, how the program binaries do
what they do.  He still retains Copyright on his own idea and code.

Redistribute and use the GPL's binaries from the SWFTools distribution
in your own work, and you *must* make the source code that created
them available to the user.  How that source code is actually made
available depends on the version of the GPL you re complying with.

> I don't know much about GPL, LGPL, BSD, MIT ... but I'm also willing to
> respect them. If including these binaries only would break the license, then
> insha' Allah I won't use them.

Dear oh dear!  Why so uptight? ;o)   Where is the problem in allowing
people access to the source code of something that you yourself got
for nothing, and crediting those responsible?   Please enlighten me/us?
Are you perchance worried that customers may not buy your wares,
when they realize the major components are GPL'd??

> There is "sswf" as an alternative to me, which may have a more suitable
> license for me (MIT), I'm not sure yet, but I find SWFTools much more easy
> to use, so I thought I check here first.t need

There is really very little different between MIT and GPL:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License.

for example, you have to include the respective License Agreement with your
own presumably intended to be proprietary ( closed source ) software!

>  Mathiass, you mentioned this in other thread:
>
> "You don't need licensing for that- You're free to use the swf output files
> for whatever you see fit."
>
> and that's exactly what I want to do, is this legal ?

With respect, that is an entirely different point.  You don't need permission
to use them, nut you should still make the source code that created them
available in some form to your 'customers'

Bettawfeeq   بالتوفيق!

Ma’a salama,


Chris.