license question / suggestion to the author(s) of FlashGot

[BartZilla]

Hi!

I have a question / request for clarification to the author(s) of FlashGot.
Mozilla prepares/supports so-called "partner repacks" of Firefox (see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Releases for some links). One of these "partner repacks" is Firefox China Pack. It includes few extensions, including FlashGot. The text on the wiki.m.o. says:

"The win32 version of the China Pack bundles FlashGot, which is licensed under the GPL. Some of the other extensions bundled with the China Pack are not licensed under the GPL, and Mozilla Online has obtained permission from the author of FlashGot to distribute it with those non-GPL-licensed extensions."

My question is - has Mozilla Online really obtained permission from you to bundle FlashGot along with closed source [1] / proprietary software? If this is the case (and I guess it is), then I'd strongly suggest including this information in the FlashGot_License.txt file to avoid any confusion. Thanks!

[1] For example, I have no idea where I could find the source code of binary files cpmanager-com.dll and ClearTypeTuner.dll. juiceService.js also doesn't seem to be in the "preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" (using language from the terms of GPL)...

PS My User-Agent is faked (but not much...). I tried to write a post with UA set to just "Konqueror", but I was getting a picture of Sylvester Stallone... I don't think that sniffing UA is that useful, but I guess administrators of this forum think otherwise .

[Giorgio Maone]

Yes, I gave them the permission, but I've got no time nor will no need to change anything in the license text distributed with regular FlashGot copies.
They've got a mail from me (the copyright holder) where I tell them it's OK to bundle FlashGot with Firefox China edition, even though I know Firefox is tri-licensed and therefore can be bundled with commercial software, but I didn't give them any "unlimited" right on FlashGot, therefore whenever I decide it's not OK anymore I just need to send them another mail to revoke the permission.
If someone has issues with FlashGot being bundled with Firefox, it's their business to demonstrate they've got my permission, and the best place to state that is in their license text, not in the "stand-alone" FlashGot which AMO and I normally distribute.

Stallowned is shown to people with non-Gecko user agents stuffing too many links in their posts and doing other spam-suspect stuff, because statisticalli 99% of spam has an user agent like that and 99% of ham uses (and displays) Gecko on this site.

[BartZilla]

Personally, I think that info about this permission should be included in the file FlashGot_License.txt (after all, "China Pack" includes bit-by-bit identical FlashGot as distributed through amo (older version); any exceptions to GPL is very important info for potential contributors to this project IMO), but it is of course your choice...

Anyway, thanks for a quick reply and explanations!

[Tom T.]

...PS My User-Agent is faked (but not much...). I tried to write a post with UA set to just "Konqueror", but I was getting a picture of Sylvester Stallone... I don't think that sniffing UA is that useful, but I guess administrators of this forum think otherwise .

In diagnosing problems, it can often be very helpful -- even critical -- to know which operating system and browser are being used, and which version of each.

I played a tiny bit with my UA, as you can see, but not with the critical information mentioned.
Regards.