FlightGear plugins: Difference between revisions

== Proprietary modules ==

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|1= My sense is that there are very few people who would outright oppose a vatsim interface to flightgear. I think most people would consider this is a good thing. Here is my question/concern. If some developer gets approved by vatsim and signs the appropriate NDA's and then builds an interface from vatsim to flightgear, then sure, that could be an external "closed source" application that bridges the communication gap between FlightGear and VATSIM. But here's the problem. Now anyone (good or evil) has a wide open, public, unsecured route into the vatsim network. The flightgear API's are open and you can inspect all the code and structures. So anyone could take the vatsim<->flightgear interface and leverage it to interject any kind of nonsense into the vatsim network. This is exactly what vatsim is trying to avoid by protecting their communication protocols. As soon as they allow a translator to be written with an open/published/documented protocol at the other end ... this is the very next best thing for someone wanting to do mischief. Please notice: this isn't me being negative about vatsim, or being negative about the idea of a vatsim interface for flightgear. I'd personally love to have it available one way or another. But I'm trying to place myself in the perspective of what the vatsim folks would think. Hopefully I'm way wrong, but if we lay it all out for them open and honestly up front so we aren't trying to sneak something past them, what do you think they would say? FlightGear doesn't have a binary plug in system so it's not possible for someone to write a closed source plugin to implement the vatsim protocol. It would have to be done as an entirely open-source module within FlightGear, or as an entirely separate external application that communicates with flightgear through some network protocol. So all that said, here's one more thing to ponder. FlightGear is a volunteer driven project. The people that pitch in and do the work get to decide what they will work on and how they will do it. We can discuss vatsim back and forth all day long, but until a volunteer steps forward who's willing (and able) to build the vatsim interface to flightgear, and who is willing to sign all the vatsim nda's, and who is willing to do whatever discussion and negotiation and strategiing and design work that is required to make the system function satisfactorily from the perspective of both vatsim and flightgear ... until such a person emerges, really all we can do is talk about it theoretically.