stuart wrote:Guys,
Two comments with my Moderator hat on.
Firstly, please do not include email addresses in forum posts, as they are liable to get harvested by spam bots. This is particularly important for other people's addresses.
Secondly, if you're asking for permission to use someone elses model, and intend to include it in the core FG CVS, or the World Scenery DB, you need to get them to explicitly release the model under the Gnu GPL v2. it is not sufficiently simply to ask them if you can include it in FlightGear. I would suggest including the email trail that explicitly includes this permission within the aircraft files themselves.
I know this sounds very pernickity, but it is highly important for the future of FG that we don't end up with licensing issues and lawsuits because someone mis-understood what they were releasing.
-Stuart (the Mod)
In the Wiki their is a stub file on this very subject (see below). Being a stub file it tells you what to do but an actual example would be nice. Anybody have an example as extensive as what the wiki is talking about? Also I would recommend moving this wiki entry to the Developers Portal in a prominent location (I remember seeing but ended up having to do a search to find it again).
I went back to the Wiki and created a link to the copyright stub on the 3d Modelers page and on the Aircraft Modelers pageThis is meant to eventually become a standard inquiry for people who want to ask for permission to use copyrighted work (i.e. images, 3D models, textures etc.) with FlightGear. By writing up a standard inquiry, people can easily copy/paste, modify this inquiry and send it to the individual copyright holders of the affected work. That way, we can slowly start to have one generic text document that people can easily use to send such standard inquiries to authors of copyrighted works.
This document should preferably at least discuss the following points:
* FlightGear, free open source, cross-platform flight simulator (link to webpage, link to wikipedia entry)
* non commercial project, developed by dozens of volunteers (link to contributor map)
* used by several academic institutions for scientific projects (provide examples
* depends on contributions (i.e. source code, 3D modelling, documentation writing etc.)
* licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, link to GNU license text and wikipedia entry
* explain the basics of the GPL, rights, advantages and duties
* explain why only GPL compatible (or possibly public domain) work can be officially integrated with FlightGear
* provide examples for community support of FlightGear (previously contributed resources)
* provide arguments for supporting FlightGear
* supporters will be mentioned on the FlightGear webpage and in the Thanks file