On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 08:36:37AM -0700, Stuart Donaldson wrote:
> Is it to allow modules to be prepared and distributed separately, outside of
> the standard Ethereal package?
> Can it be used to prepare proprietary parsers that might be distributed with
> restricted licenses?
> All of the above?
All of the above.
It's a way of having protocol dissectors that aren't built into the
Ethereal executable image; reasons why one might want to do that include
("include", not "are", as there may well be reasons I haven't thought
of):
somebody might want to do development on a dissector without
having to build their own Ethereal binary (e.g., working on
their dissector but using it with a standard Ethereal binary);
somebody might want to have a dissector distributed with a
license that is, for whatever reason, not compatible with the
GPL (whether the license is restricted or conflicts with the GPL
in *other* ways).
> Are there any plugins which are not distributed as part of Ethereal?
Yes - for example:
http://voice2sniff.org/
which is a plugin for some H.323 protocols, which is distributed
separately because much of it is generated by an ASN.1 compiler - either
the generated code from that compiler, or the library that code
requires, or both are licensed under the Mozilla Public License, which
is incompatible with the GPL according to
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLIncompatibleLicenses
"The Mozilla Public License (MPL).
This is a free software license which is not a strong copyleft;
unlike the X11 license, it has some complex restrictions that make it
incompatible with the GNU GPL. That is, a module covered by the GPL and
a module covered by the MPL cannot legally be linked together. We urge
you not to use the MPL for this reason."