[impdev] LLKDU

Jacek Antonelli jacek.antonelli at gmail.com
Fri Sep 17 21:46:00 PDT 2010


Earlier today, McCabe and I attended a meeting with Oz Linden and
several other viewer developers, regarding some policy issues
affecting third party viewers. The most significant issue is that LL
considers it to be a GPL violation to use LLKDU or any other
proprietary library with the open-source GPL code. And, therefore, we
are supposed to remove Imprudence's ability to use LLKDU even when the
user has copied it from a SL installation.

I disagree with LL that this is a GPL violation. We do not include or
distribute any proprietary KDU code in the viewer, not even
proprietary header files. (LLKDU is loaded as a "dynamic shared
object", not linked or compiled into the viewer like libraries usually
are.) Plus, the viewer is fully functional (but slower and less
stable) even if LLKDU is not present.

However, it's obvious that we will need to get rid of LLKDU support
sometime. For one thing, LL will eventually hit us with a hammer if we
don't do it. Also, my impression is that LL made a big licensing
mistake by distributing LLKDU as a dynamic library, and are now trying
to fix the situation so that the KDU creators don't swing the hammer
at them. If that's true, then LLKDU is not really "legitimate", so
using it (or encouraging our users to use it) is legally questionable.
Besides, I don't like to take unfair advantage of someone's mistake,
for both moral reasons, and practical (hammer-avoiding) reasons.

I have pushed a commit to my repository ("nokdu" branch) that I think
completely removes the viewer's ability to load LLKDU. I've tested it
on Linux32 and Mac so far, and it seems to work. Some day, it will go
into the main code -- but the question is _when_.

Tomorrow is Saturday, when we usually release a new Experimental.
Additionally, 1.3 RC3 is 99.9% done, and I'd like to release it very
soon, too. So, the question is whether we should cripple these two
versions by disabling KDU, or not. If we do cripple them, it will
cause serious problems for many users. If we don't cripple them, LL
might get a bit annoyed at us, but I don't think they'd do anything
yet.

Weighing the two options, it seems clear to me that _not_ crippling
these versions is more practical. But, I want to hear your guys'
opinions (other team members and anyone else who cares to speak up)
before we make a final decision about it. What say you?

- Jacek


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