Re: [Gnash] Avoiding legal problems

[Rob Savoye]

Tomas Groth wrote:

> I was wondering if gnash has made a policy about what developers are allowed to
> use to help improving and implementing gnash? I'm asking because over at
> gplflash (where I am/was a developer) we got some legal advice on the subject,
> and I thought we might as well share that, since we all want a flashplayer,
> without fearing being sued.

  Currently all the work done on both GameSWF and Gnash has been done 
not using any of the official MacroMedia tools or documents. I 
personally don't have any MacroMedia software or documentation, as I 
don't run WinDoze, and have never been a Flash movie developer.

  There are many resources available on the net (Google is your friend 
:-) ) that describes the format, bytecodes, and ActionScript 
functionality. I'm working up a list of links for the site for other 
developers. I guess I should ask the FSF legal folks to look into this, 
but my own beliefs are that if you haven't opened a package with a 
MacroMedia EULA, you'd be clean. I also think disassembling any 
MacroMedia tools or their player or plugin isn't a good idea...

  Much of my own work has been done using Flare and flasm to 
disassemble the Flash movies themselves, which should be fine.

> Here are what we know at this point:
> http://gplflash.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/LegalSituation

  That looks like a good quick summary. Now that Adobe has bought 
MacroMedia there is some hope that since Adobe has been a good supporter 
of public formats like PDF and Postscript, that they may lessen the 
restrictions.

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html

        - rob -