MM addon licensing

To discuss development of addons / skins / customization of MediaMonkey.

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TIV73
Posts: 229
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 1:31 pm

MM addon licensing

Post by TIV73 »

With the first release candidate available and the full release of MM5 on the horizon (fingers crossed), I was wondering about licensing and attribution for addons.

Before I continue, I want to clarify that the developers of mediamonkey have shown nothing but support for the addon community in the last, 15(?) years, so I'm not implying malicious intent, ignorance, or anything like that. I am simply asking out of curiosity and because I haven't seen anybody talk about it so far.

Are there any guidelines about how the distribution of addons for mediamonkey works from a legal perspective? I couldn't find anything (obvious) in the general mm5 license text that explicitly permits or disallows it.

The app exposes a framework for addons and customizations, there is documentation for developers, and a section dedicated to third party addons on the mediamonkey page, so it's probably fair to say that the development and distribution of third party extensions is at least implicitly allowed.
But what's to say that I, as a theoretical addon developer, am allowed to do so? Do I need to ask for permission first? Can I use whatever license I wish to, including commercial ones?

What about the reusal of mediamonkey code? Like, all the frontend UI code is plainly visible, so say I write an addon that reuses an existing javascript function but changes out a couple of variables, is that fine? Or a new skin that takes one of the existing ones, updates a few css lines to give it a different look but leaves the rest as-is?
drakinite
Posts: 965
Joined: Tue May 12, 2020 10:06 am
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Re: MM addon licensing

Post by drakinite »

That's a good question. I'm not sure if we yet have a strictly defined legal basis for modified MM5 source code.

I can tell you with certainty that developing and distributing third party extensions, which contain just your own code, is completely allowed; and as far as I am aware, you can use any license, commercial or otherwise.

As for distributing modified JS/HTML/LESS code, that's where I'm not certain. I don't want to accidentally say something incorrect, since this is legal stuff, so I'll ask Rusty to help clarify.
Image
Student electrical-computer engineer, web programmer, part-time MediaMonkey developer, full-time MediaMonkey enthusiast
I uploaded many addons to MM's addon page, but not all of those were created by me. "By drakinite, Submitted by drakinite" means I made it on my own time. "By Ventis Media, Inc., Submitted by drakinite" means it may have been made by me or another MediaMonkey developer, so instead of crediting/thanking me, please thank the team. You can still ask me for support on any of our addons.
rusty
Posts: 8393
Joined: Tue Apr 29, 2003 3:39 am
Location: Montreal, Canada

Re: MM addon licensing

Post by rusty »

Hi,

Re. the distribution of addons, you can use whatever license you wish, including a commercial license (you'll notice on the addons site that some addons contain a 'buy' button for such cases).

Regarding re-use of MediaMonkey code in an addon, we're in the process of tagging certain files indicating that they can be re-used and under what conditions. 'Shared code' will include the following text:

This file is part of MediaMonkey licensed for use under the Ventis Media End User License Agreement, and for the creation of derivative works under the less restrictive Ventis Limited Reciprocal License. See: https://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/mmw/5/Ve ... icense.txt

Our intent is to allow our UI code to be re-used, but a) only for use within a MediaMonkey addon and b) only if it doesn't compromise our business model. That said, anyone is free to create an addon that duplicates MM Gold functionality--just not with Ventis code.

Sound reasonable?

Thanks!

-Rusty
TIV73
Posts: 229
Joined: Sat Nov 12, 2011 1:31 pm

Re: MM addon licensing

Post by TIV73 »

That clarifies a lot of things, thanks for the information!
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