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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Alpha R3D SDK...

Basically you need to look at the GPL license and our license. For questions regarding our license please contact the email address and we'll get your questions answered as quickly as possible!
 
I'd like to see the license before I send my personal/business info to Red. Why does Red want our personal/business info in the first place? What's it going to be used for?

If we don't check the box "Willing to test Alpha/Beta SDK releases", does that mean we won't get access to the Alpha SDK? I don't want to test the Alpha release, I just want to attempt to implement the Alpha release. Testing, to me, suggests an intended effort to find defects, but I'm hoping to avoid finding defects if at all possible.
 
How much does the SDK cost to use?
Are we supposed to give royalties back to RED for selling products which use the SDK?
 
Rob, did you see mine in the queue? My outgoing server is playing up sometimes and I don't want to re-send the app twice unnecessarily - I can imagine the length of the queue... :)

Yes we did, thanks!
 
I sent an email to RED with my questions.

I'm no lawyer, but Red's agreement seems to be written in fairly straightforward language. As far as I understand it, RED requires you to have a EULA on your product ("Developer Program") that forbids redistribution, sublicensing, etc. of your own compiled code. So your own code for this couldn't be GPL, and it apparently requires a EULA so while it could be free-as-in-beer it can't be free-as-in-open (libre). But if you made a non-redistributable binary DLL that got loaded by GPL code, maybe that could work? There must be existing sample cases with similar limitations.

Yeah, that's how I read it too.
Some people (myself included) will be fine with a closed-source free-as-in-gratis DLL. Some other people will not be very happy if it's not free-as-in-libre (there's no source code available under an open license such as GPL, BSD, Apache, etc).

I'm not even sure if it's possible to distribute a DLL using at the same time a GPL-licensed API (AviSynth) and a closed source SDK (RED). If I write it for myself only, it's clearly legal. But if I put it out there... I don't know.

Wait, the NVidia drivers for Linux are like that, they're bound to both GPL (Linux kernel) and proprietary (NVidia) APIs and that's perfectly legal. Nobody sued NVidia for doing that.

Even if it's not legal, I guess it's always possible to write two pieces of software, one bound to the GPL API, the other bound to the closed source SDK, and have them communicate somehow (sockets, shared memory). This will keep separate the two possibly incompatible licenses, but it requires more work.
 
I'd like to see the license before I send my personal/business info to Red. Why does Red want our personal/business info in the first place? What's it going to be used for?

It's used so we can send you the license and the SDK in the future and contact you regarding SDK matters. Our privacy policy is available on the website and we will of course not use your information for anything else including sending it to other people / companies. For more information please see our legal page: http://www.red.com/legal

If we don't check the box "Willing to test Alpha/Beta SDK releases", does that mean we won't get access to the Alpha SDK? I don't want to test the Alpha release, I just want to attempt to implement the Alpha release. Testing, to me, suggests an intended effort to find defects, but I'm hoping to avoid finding defects if at all possible.

At the moment this is merely an indication if you're willing to deal with an unfinished product. We haven't decided on what to do with this data as of today and my feeling is we'll be sending out the SDK regardless of what you've entered. It's more a thing for future releases after the first stable release.
 
If there are no patents or whatever involved with the code, my feeling is that RED should release the SDK under a very open license.

Kind of like Sun - they make money from selling hardware, so they give away the software (OpenSolaris) for free, as a bait.

OTOH, if there are some patents or other restrictions involving the codecs and so on, then I understand why the SDK is not free-as-in-libre (open source).
 
I'd love for Red to allow GPL code to read their file format! If they are taking votes I'll cast mine that way. Unfortunately, based on their EULA requirements I get the feeling they consider Redcode and even the interface to it, to contain or comprise trade secrets. I'd love to hear otherwise.
 
As Jim indicated this is a first start, not the final end station. Just like everything else we're doing the R3D SDK program will grow and expand.
 
Programmers?

Programmers?

Are there any programmers out there who've worked extensively with SDK who can say what they think is possible? Or what they're attempting with it?
 
If there are no patents or whatever involved with the code, my feeling is that RED should release the SDK under a very open license.

This is a pretty open license. I'm not sure what people are complaining about. It seems all RED is trying to do is keep tabs on who is working with the SDK and they don't want the SDK, its components or uncompiled bits floating around as part of software distributions. This is very, very common practice. I'm seriously wondering if some people here are not familiar with most software development practices and are just looking for something to complain about. ...Or most just never read the license agreements anyway.

The way I understand the RED SDK and how RED restricts re-distribution is pretty simple. If someone is to write open-source software that makes use of the RED SDK, it's possible. You just can't redistribute the RED SDK with your code. You simply state that it requires it and leave it up to whoever gathers your code to go acquire the RED SDK on their own. Very common, very simple. We see this with a lot of "open" GNU licensed distributions where various SDKs or code components can not be distributed with subsequent third-party code. Each person looking to compile or continue work on the code must go through proper channels to obtain the necessary tools.

Kind of like Sun - they make money from selling hardware, so they give away the software (OpenSolaris) for free, as a bait.

Yeah, go read the EULA.

OTOH, if there are some patents or other restrictions involving the codecs and so on, then I understand why the SDK is not free-as-in-libre (open source).

Yep... We also have to consider that none of us have the SDK yet. We don't really know what we're getting just yet and I'm sure that many of us who end up working with the SDK regularly, producing usable tools, will hold some weight when making requests for future SDK revisions. RED is a company that listens and this is their first run at the SDK.
 
... We also have to consider that none of us have the SDK yet. We don't really know what we're getting just yet ...

Precisely. Which is why when they ask you for the name of the product you're working on and the description of what it does, all you can do at this point is reiterate its dependant on what's available through the current interface. Until you've explored what's available it's difficult to make any firm declarations.
 
Precisely. Which is why when they ask you for the name of the product you're working on and the description of what it does, all you can do at this point is reiterate its dependant on what's available through the current interface. Until you've explored what's available it's difficult to make any firm declarations.

That's a good point and one we'll rectify soon by probably including a product description (might be a handy thing, heh) :)
 
I am not programmer , i don't know anything about writting codes ??
What R3D SDK will help anyway for normal users ..
What is the way in which this ALPHA release will help us ?
 
Bassam: it will allow other companies to load R3D files into their software products and build tools for an R3D workflow. As a non-programmer you do not need to get the SDK.
 
Thanks Rob .but this will open Heaven Gates for us (redusers) ,
In near future we will find hundreds of softwares , and plug ins that will support our red workfkows . is that right ?
 
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