Bertrand, I know you like inline responses but not sure how to do that with the information I want to add.
The code in question is 1) playerglobal.swc to compile the majority of the Flex components 2) airglobal.swc to compile the Flex components targeted at AIR 3) many pieces of the AIR Integration kit which are need to do Flex mobile development The relevant license info is http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Legal+Stuff. The above code is all covered by the later license mentioned which is, "Adobe Flex SDK license". I can't even pretend to understand all the licensing issues. I think playerglobal.swc/airglobal.swc can be looked at as Actionscript system libraries much the same way as the java compiler has system jars. java is considered a build tool and people can compile their code with those jars. If that argument is correct that means one would need to get the two swcs and put them someplace in order to build and then the remaining question is could we provide a convenience script, outside of the build procedure, that could download the two swcs and put them into place? I think you covered AIR Integration kit in your 4. below. We would instruct the user to unzip the kit on top of the Flex tree. We don't use all the pieces of the kit so we delete some of them. Again the question would be could we provide a convenience script that either downloaded the integration kit and unzipped it deleting the unused pieces, or just unzipped it and deleted the unused pieces? There is a benefit to this strategy regardless of the licensing issues since the mac version of the kit has symbolic links and many of the build tools obliterate those links which cause runtime issues when debugging. Carol On 4/26/12 3 :22AM, "Bertrand Delacretaz" <bdelacre...@apache.org> wrote: >Hi Alex, > >On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 2:36 AM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com> wrote: >> ....We discovered yesterday that playerglobal.swc is not under MPL and >>is still under Adobe license. Same for the AIR SDK.... > >What's that Adobe license exactly? URL? > >> ...I want to check my understanding of how to handle these binaries.... > >I'll try that assuming that Adobe license does not allow us to >redistribute those files. > >> >> 1. We still cannot check these into Apache Flex SVN because we don¹t >>have permission from Adobe to do so. >> 2. We cannot put them in either a source or binary distribution >>because we don¹t have permission from Adobe to do so. > >Both correct IMO. > >> 3. Since these are required files, we cannot download them as part of >>the build script. > >Not automatically, but if the user needs to take active action to >confirm that they accept using those files, and us encouraging them to >do so is not illegal, the build could download them. > >However, if Flex cannot work without them we have a problem - required >dependencies of an Apache product must have compatible licenses. > >If you can document (in JIRA I'd say) what makes you consider those >files as build tools, that relaxes some of the licensing requirements >as described at http://apache.org/legal/resolved.html#build-tools > >> 4. FlashBuilder currently expects an SDK to be a folder tree contain >>a set of SWCs some of which are a result of >> compiling the Apache Flex code, but one is, for example, >>playerglobal.swc. Can we tell folks to take the source >> distribution and unzip it into the same folder tree as >>playerglobal.swc? Or does that go into dangerous territory >> where it would be confusing to someone as to what the license is for >>various files after the source distribution >+ is unzipped?... > >I'll try to rephrase to make sure I understand - IIUC someone needs to >tell people to unpack the Apache Flex source distribution and mix that >with other files which do not come from Apache, in order to use >FlashBuilder which is an external tool that does not belong to us. > >I don't see a problem, we are just providing instructions about how >people can make use of Apache Flex in the FlashBuilder context, as a >convenience to them. > >> 5. Are the rules for a convenience binary distribution different? >>Could we instruct folks to unzip the binary into >> the same folder tree as playerglobal.swc? > >We can IMO, in the same way. > >-Bertrand > >-Bertrand
