[Marble-devel] Out of tree/non-GPL components?

[Deepak Saxena]

Hi all,

I'm working with some folks in the automotive industry on the
development of a Linux-based IVI platform [1] wht certain pluggable
components and one of the things we're looking to do is provide a 
method for developers to test certain navigation and Location
Based Service components. I've been looking at Marble a bit and
it seems like a really good fit due the plug-in architecture which
allows different routing, map provider, and paint plugins. I can
even imagine a plug-in that can be used for semi-automated QA 
testing that could capture screen shots and shove them to a
repository to be later inspected by a human.

There are two issues I'm wondering about that I'd like input about
from the Marble team:

1) What is the viability of developing plugins as standalone 
   components outside the Marble source tree? I'm imagining
   somethinig similar to building out-of-tree kernel modules.
   If this is not doable right now, what is the interest
   level in this being supported? I may be able to get some
   cycles to go work on this.

2) Some, if not all, of the routing and other components that
   will need to be testing are likely to be of a propietary
   nature so a plug in would act as a bridge between Marble
   and the non-GPL lower level routing or map data engine,
   likely through an IPC mechanism as run-time linking would
   obviously be a GPL violation. I'd like to check in with
   the community about the prior approach too as my intention
   is not to abuse the work that has been done and stay
   in line with community guidelines. Is a plug-in that
   bridges to a propietary implemntation acceptable?

~Deepak

-- 
"People think all we need to fix our predicament is a free source of
energy, but I think we need to change out behaviour. More energy would
just deplete the Earth's lifeblood faster." - Janine Benyius