[LAU] Proposal: OpenDAWS (long)

[Paul Davis]

On Thu, 2007-06-07 at 16:55 +0200, Nick Copeland wrote:
> Doesn't this remain a license?

All software that is not public domain requires a license. The GPL is a
license. Without a license, simple copyright law kicks in and nobody can
do anything at all.

>  The implementors agreement stipulates that a 
> licensee may freely distribute but not sublicense, hence any interface 
> defined by a DAW could not be used by another party who had not signed their 
> own license - 

this is a red-herring. DAW or other application authors are not
implementators of an AAF specification, they are users of an AAF SDK.
if you want to implement your own AAF SDK from scratch, i can see their
concern about making sure that your implementation was fully compliant
with the spec before being allowed to associate it with the term "AAF",
since the term is used to sell products as a useful capability.

> anybody downloading the DAW only has an end user license even 
> though any party who signs up can distribute what they like. 

No, *anybody* can redistribute. You do not need to join the AAF to do
this.

> It looks lilke 
> the agreement can also be revoked at any point by the AAF Org just by 
> nullifiying their license.

I can see no clause that would enable this. And I note that the FAQ
stated: "The AAF SDK is licensed under a perpetual, royalty-free
license." Note the word perpetual.

> Additionally, does the current format demand a Microsoft storage license be 
> singed as well? Their presentation was nice and fuzzy about using the 
> community but that does seem a little bit like lipservice if they expect 
> that a Microsoft agreement be signed as well.

The MS storage format thing is still lingering in lots of docs, buts its
been gone at the source level for 2-3 years. There was a GNU replacement
for it created some time ago that is included in the SDK.

> Are there any other licenses than those on their site that are a bit more 
> open? 

They want (and may already have) OSI certification for the license. Its
not the GPL, but there are clear reasons for that. I really can't figure
out your motives here. My most optimistic guess is that you read some
outdated text on a website and got all pissed at the whole idea.

> Based on the apparant hype surrounding the XML format then perhaps the 
> MS license is not longer a requirement, since the microsoft document on 
> states that the SSL license code is a requirement of any AAF implementation 
> to that date, potentially not in subsequent releases?

As stated above, there is no reason to use any MS code or agree to any
MS license in order to use the AAF SDK at this time.

--p