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Comment by chrismonsanto | Hacker News Reader

Does this mean the FSF can cross off 'free flash player' from their high priority list? What will happen to Gnash?

Rob Sayove, the Gnash lead, was at the GNU 30th, and he's said he's basically done with Gnash. There's going to be an upcoming release, and then it's done. He was a bit concerned about the state of Flash, but Shumway gave him some hopes for the future.

(I am also a Shumway contributor)

The Gnash guys have done a lot of good work, but for a native open-source Flash player, Lightspark became the project to watch some time ago: http://lightspark.github.io/

Thanks I didn't know about www-plugins/lightspark =) Gonna compile/install it, because adobe-flash is crashing for me all the time.

I'm guessing something like HURD, some people will still work on it but it won't be the focus of anything. I haven't had any success with Gnash, it can (choppily) play YouTube (which now has HTML5) and nothing else worked.

YouTube (which now has HTML5)

Sadly, YouTube videos that have embedded ads seem to be Flash-only.

You can still watch them with HTML5 using this addon for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/youtube-all-h...

I'm assuming there's a Chrome equivalent. I've completely disabled Flash in my browser now. Feels good.

This isn't GPL, so I'm assuming work will go on.

It is Apache v2 licensed, which means that Shumway is free software. So, if Shumway functions adequately then I imagine that the FSF will consider the task complete. Believe it or not, the FSF and the GNU project don't demand that everything be GPL licensed.

Which is great for the companies that take open source into their products and never return anything back.

I understand, which is why I personally prefer to use copyleft licenses. However, non-copyleft licenses like Apache v2 are still compatible with free software.

GPL isn't about (nor does it require) licensees to contribute anything back.

Hence the need of AGPL.

I do a lot of development with closed source software as well, but when I do open source, I take the point of only using copyleft licenses.

The AGPL doesn't either. We have a product based on a third-party AGPL licensed codebase and we're fully compliant even if we don't contribute everything back.

You should really read up on the licenses and the intent behind them; contributing back was never the point.

AGPL is questionably enforceable and still only requires contributions back in a very specific case.

On the positive side, apache has a strong patent clause. It was so much admired, that FSF used it for GPLv3 (with the single adjustment regarding patent agreements).

Since Apache can be relicensed as I understand, doesn't that mean GNU people could just slap GPL on there if that's what stops them using it? Isn't this how they usually integrate FF anyways, by renaming it something to something like Icyfox and changing its license?

'Iceweasel' is the branding Debian applies to Firefox (and 'Icedove' for Thunderbird). That's nothing to do with the code license, it's specifically about trademark and copyright on the names and logos.

Correct. I recommend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel#History_and_origin_o... for more information. Please note this:

  The artwork in Firefox had a proprietary copyright license.

As for the license:

  The rebranded programs are available under Mozilla's 
  standard MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license. Like Mozilla, the 
  default icons are under the same tri-license, but unlike 
  Mozilla, there are no trademark restrictions.

Some years ago I wrote a comment on Slashdot[1] where I researched what GNU software isn't copyleft. Copying it here because it took me almost 20 minutes to find it again, and I want the info to gain some Google juice so I can find it next time I need it (maybe in 6 years?):

[1] http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=225606&cid=18272276

>>> NOTE: This was true as of 2007

These are all the GNU packages not under a copyleft license I have been able to verify. I have tried to err on the side of caution, which means all the packages listed here are GNU and not copyleft, but there might be some non-copyleft GNU packages that I have failed to list:

    Kawa [fsf.org]: licensed under the Kawa License [gnu.org], which is an X-11/MIT style license. Kawa is a Scheme/Emacs Lisp environment that runs on Java, in case you were wondering.
    GNU less [fsf.org]: the page says it is licensed under a SimplePermissiveNowarranty, but if you download the latest less tarball from ftp.gnu.org [gnu.org], you will find it is GPLd. However, older versions of less were non-copyleft [gnu.org], and they still are, as you can still download them.
    Ncurses [gnu.org], which is distributed under an X11-style license.
    Proto [fsf.org], which is is a tool for finding C and C++ function prototypes (someone please explain to me what that means), in the Public Domain. This one is not downloadable from the GNU ftp, but I guess that, if they list it as a GNU project, it must be.
    Quexo [fsf.org], xquery implementation using Kawa to compile to java bytecode. Under the Kawa license, which means an X11-style license.
    Speex [fsf.org], an audio compression codec for voice, under the Xiph.org license (a modified BSD)

At least one other non-GNU programs is listed as being GNU on the directory, like Slib [fsf.org], a portable scheme library, which under a simple permissive non-warranty license.

You can make "GPL version" with 1 fork though.

That is not true. The people who contributed the original Shunway code own the copyright to it. They are choosing to license it under Apache. You cannot change that since you do not own the copyright.

They may choose to "relicense" it under GPL if all the contributed agree.

What you suggest cannot legally be done. However, Apache is GPL compatible, so it can still be used in a GPL project, though its license will not change.

IANAL

It's shorthand for an end result that is in practice similar. If I fork the project, add new features, and license my new code under the GPL, a user of the forked version needs to abide by the copyleft provisions. They could, of course, continue to use the original Apache v2 code without my GPL'd additions, on a non-copyleft basis, since I cannot relicense the existing code.

You can make a derivative that also includes GPL parts, and the entire package will be GPL for practical purposes.

Yeah, but you can do a simple change and suddenly it's derivative and you can licence it as GPL.

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