Roku Developer Program

[derobert]

"5(A)(iii)" wrote:
iii. not contain any open source code or other restricted code that could require Roku to publicly post or display any third party notices or any modifications to such code.

I hope this is intended to deal with a technical limitation of the Roku channel store, in that is not capable of displaying long legal notices and offering source code to download?

Basically, I'd like to know if its possible to have open source channels, under say GPLv2. The answer appears to be "no", and that's unfortunate, and honestly rather hypocritical for a device running Linux.

(Also, 5(B) requires the right to sublicense, which I'm not sure if I have with a typical open source license's "license to all parties" language. IANAL.)

[KennyJ]

Their issue may be that under some open source licenses they'd have to publish source code of their own program. Something like this just happened to MicroSoft actually -- where one of their programmers used open source code for a ISO burning program they provided. They were obligated under the license to post the entire source code of that program.

[-LD]

"KennyJ" wrote:
They were obligated under the license to post the entire source code of that program.

That doesn't sound right because open source licenses don't work that way. They would required publishing any code that has been modified, but not proprietary code. So unless basically the entire app was built off of some open source, then they wouldn't have to publish all the code, just what they used and modified.

[bumpus]

Trouble (for Roku) with licenses like the GPL is that the requirement to redistribute the source sticks to the organization that distributes the application that uses it, not the organization that created it.

What that means for Roku is that if someone writes an app that uses GPL code and put it on the channel store then Roku has an obligation to give the source to anyone who requests it. Roku doesn't want to have to do this on behalf of Joe random developer, so they wrote section 5(A)iii stating that if you do something that imposes an obligation on Roku, then they want no part of it.

[KennyJ]

"-LD" wrote:

"KennyJ" wrote:
They were obligated under the license to post the entire source code of that program.

That doesn't sound right because open source licenses don't work that way. They would required publishing any code that has been modified, but not proprietary code. So unless basically the entire app was built off of some open source, then they wouldn't have to publish all the code, just what they used and modified.

I don't know much about it -- this was something I heard on Windows Weekly, so I might have misunderstood. Here's the story:

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs ... -code.aspx

[-LD]

Yeah, sounds like what I expected. They didn't provide their modifications per the license. Par for the course for a company like Microsoft.

[derobert]

"bumpus" wrote:
Trouble (for Roku) with licenses like the GPL is that the requirement to redistribute the source sticks to the organization that distributes the application that uses it, not the organization that created it.

Well, two things:

(1) It'd be nice if Roku were to have a way to distribute the source, or have a link to the source on my server. This would be perfect, and would allow an open-source ecosystem of channels.

(2) Even if they didn't, it could still be the application developer's problem. For example, if I upload a GPL-covered binary to my web site w/o also putting the source there, my ISP is technically distributing that. But you'd go after me, not my ISP. My ISP would, of course, take down the binary if they got a DMCA request, but obtaining the source is not their problem.

Alternatively, a quick question: If I were to upload a GPL-covered channel as a private channel, and then post somewhere (on my own site) the private app code/key as well as the source code (so that the program and the source would be distributed alongside, GPL 3a), would that be OK? I think 5(A)(iii) is satisfied then, as well as the GPL, but IANAL.

[dellsweig]

"derobert" wrote:

"bumpus" wrote:
Trouble (for Roku) with licenses like the GPL is that the requirement to redistribute the source sticks to the organization that distributes the application that uses it, not the organization that created it.

Well, two things:

(1) It'd be nice if Roku were to have a way to distribute the source, or have a link to the source on my server. This would be perfect, and would allow an open-source ecosystem of channels.

(2) Even if they didn't, it could still be the application developer's problem. For example, if I upload a GPL-covered binary to my web site w/o also putting the source there, my ISP is technically distributing that. But you'd go after me, not my ISP. My ISP would, of course, take down the binary if they got a DMCA request, but obtaining the source is not their problem.

Alternatively, a quick question: If I were to upload a GPL-covered channel as a private channel, and then post somewhere (on my own site) the private app code/key as well as the source code (so that the program and the source would be distributed alongside, GPL 3a), would that be OK? I think 5(A)(iii) is satisfied then, as well as the GPL, but IANAL.

I think the EUA is attempting to prevent the user community from developing using different programming languages/environments other then the Brightscript interpreter built into their system. They have license for bs.