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by stephencanon 3910 days ago
No documented format (actually an explicit acknowledgement that the format will likely change). The implementation is the spec, the implementation is GPLv3, so many companies lawyers will prevent engineers even looking at it to write a clean-room implementation.
1 comments
gillianseed 3910 days ago
>so many companies lawyers will prevent engineers even looking at it to write a clean-room implementation.

Maybe you should look up what 'clean-room' reverse engineering is. One person looks at the code, writes down how what it does, then gives that description to another person who writes CLEAN-ROOM code based upon the description.

There's no difference in doing a clean-room implementation of GPLv3 code than of any other code license.

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stephencanon 3910 days ago
The difference is that the lawyers for some companies will not sign off on employees even looking at GPLv3 sources. Rightly or wrongly, this really does make a clean-room implementation impossible.

One can reasonably argue that this is stupid and not the fault of the GPL. However, it's also reality, and a real block to adoption of technologies like image formats.

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gillianseed 3910 days ago
Get better lawyers.

Clean-room implementation has been around for ages, I've done it professionally myself, both from source code and disassembly.

Also not every company has clueless lawyers, nor does a clean-room re-implementation of this format need to come from a company, I'd say it's more likely not.

Seriously this sounds more like GPLv3 scaremongering than anything else, I've never seen anything like this in my professional life as a developer.

edit: as for my personal preference, I think GPL is a great license for full application/solution style software, but for libraries/frameworks, I prefer permissive licensing.

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stolsvik 3908 days ago
+1 for the "full app/solution" vs. library/framework applicability for GPL vs. permissive: That is exactly my opinion too. When I see GPL'ed libraries, I think "try before you buy"-style open source code, and these invariably also comes with an option to buy a commercial license.
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