I don't think it's appropriate to change the licensing of the GPL portions of GIMP, even if somehow it could be done. It's kind of like asking that you GPL your commercial software so we can include parts of it into GIMP. ;-) However, it would be neat to see GIMP extended in such a way that you could hide the main UI (like to toolbox), but still load images and run interactive plugins on them. The main question would be how you get image data into GIMP fast enough. You would probably want to extend GIMP to be able to access your data as you have it stored or access portions of it from your program, via a pipe or something. (I guess, basically make GIMP act like a plugin itself to any other application.) -Shawn On Tue, Nov 02, 1999 at 05:50:53PM -0500, Bill Dolson wrote: > Hi; > I have been developing commercial software for telecine color > correction (film to tape transfer) using GTK on Linux for nearly a year > now. I have a requirement to offer filter plug-ins and wish to explore > using the GIMP Plug-ins. I did an exploratory post asking if anyone was > aware of using GIMP plug-ins in non-GIMP apps last week but did not get > a reply. I have been working on this some more and wish to pursue this > further. > As far as I can determine, for those Plug-ins which are GPLed there > should be no problem with us distributing them so long as we comply with > the license requirements. We would, however, like to be able to use > some GIMP modules as the basis of an API emulator, notably plug_in.c and > perhaps others once we become more familiar with the problem. This is > strictly a convenience to avoid us having to write the "GIMP" side of > the API from scratch. For us to do so would require the license on > these modules changed from GPL to LGPL so that they could be linked into > our non-free software. I assume this request should ultimately be > directed to Peter and Spencer but I wish to put it out for consideration > by the developers. We would also like to be aware of any changes to the > plug-in API by the developers. > By our understanding, if the GIMP modules required for the plug-in API > could be LGPLed than we could use them as the basis for a library which > could be used by any app which wanted to use GIMP plug-ins. This library > would, of course, remain freely available and we would be pleased to > contribute to that work. > For our purposes we only need basic filter plug-ins but that's at least > a start. > Why should GIMP offer a plug-in API emulation library? It would > enhance the position of GIMP as a viable alternative to Photoshop and > enhance the atttractiveness of GTK as a toolkit and Linux as an OS. To > the best of my knowledge we were the only company showing a product at > the last SIGGRAPH implemented with GTK on Linux. (I would love to hear > of others so I could tell my boss!). Several digital effects and > compositing systems have implemented Photoshop Plugin API emulators so > they can run Photoshop Plugins including Commotion and Digital Fusion. > If we are to have a competitive product we need to be able to provide a > plug-in API, ideally one with a good body of existing plug-ins. > I am very interested in anyone's comments on these issues. > Regards; > Bill Dolson -- Shawn T. Amundson amundson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Research and Development http://www.eventloop.com/ EventLoop, Inc. http://www.snorfle.net/ "The assumption that the universe looks the same in every direction is clearly not true in reality." - Stephen Hawking
