swf licence

Are there any licensing issues with creating a commercial player based on OpenSWF?
If no, could you tell me why?

And one more question.
Who has the copy right of OpenSWF?

May I ask additional questions regarding OpenSWF licence

Is it allowed to create the following commercial products without licence ?
a. player which plays OpenSWF file
b. authoring tools which create OpenSWF file
c. converter such as "OpenSWF to SVG" or "SVG to OpenSWF"

Hi,

there are two things to distinguish:

openswf, as its name implies, is open - information collected by interested developers. Some work done in this area may be covered by gpl or lgpl license.

Macromedia allows you to license their description of the swf format - this is specifically intended for the purpose of creating swf producers of all sorts. The license form is geared at companies rather than individuals and asks for the type of application you want to produce

In practise, you will need to use both sources together

Musicman

Dear Musicman,
Thank you very much for your information.

Is my following understanding correct?

a. There are two kinds of information. One is "openswf" which is open. The other is "description of the swf format" which should be licenced by Macromedia

b. We can use "openswf" information for all kinds of purposes without licence. But we can use "description of the swf format" licenced by Macromedia only for the purpose of creating swf producers.

c. It's necessary to use both sources together for creating swf related products. So we can only create swf producers.

I am looking forward to hearing from you.
Thank you in advance.

gawoh

Hi,

you should perhaps go to their "swf format" page and read the license text. I dont see that it precludes swf consumers ... but MM probably do not expect anybody to write an independent player.
You can also license swf player source, but unlike the swf format they really check your license application
The rules seem to be: player must be for an environment that does not have one already (like a different os)
player must be distributed as binary
The anticipated use of that license would be for nokia to add a flash screen to their phones ...

Musicman

Dear Musicman,
Thank you for your sugestion.
But I'd like to back to my original question.

Is it possible to provide a commercial player based on OpenSWF without permission of Macromedia ?

Could you tell me "yes" or "no" ?
gawoh