Bad, bad license

[rodot]

I found a summary of the GPL-3 licence.
It allows commercial use and requires you to release the source of the library. But I'm not sure if it requires that you release the source of your games.

I agree with you with the "polished" games. By the way I think that in the Games Gallery I'll change the qualifier "stable" to "finished", because many games are marked as stable while they are only beta (even if they are stable beta). But that's out of topic.

[BozoDel]

The GPL requires you to release the code of your game and give people the right to use your game in pretty much anyway they want. So let's suppose yodasvideoarcade makes a game, and I buy it. That gives me the right to sell copies and or modify it as I please. If a game uses ANY GPL code, then the whole game must be GPL. While I think it's an awesome license, it's probably not what the community is looking for.

LGPL is more lax. You can use LGPL libraries, but that doesn't make your whole game LGPL. You still have to provide a way for the user to change only the LGPL parts and recompile, and in this case I think it means you have to show your code. But giving your non-LGPL code still doesn't give people the right to redistribute or alter it.

LGPL code can be made GPL, but not the other way around.

P.S.: It makes me feel awesome to be surrounded by hackers and yet be the most knowledgeable about open licenses!

[rodot]

Okay, let's go LGLP for the whole project then?

P.S.: It makes me feel awesome to be surrounded by hackers and yet be the most knowledgeable about open licenses!

P.S.: It makes me feel dumb to be surrounded by hackers far better than me in every single domain while I'm the one who created the project

[yodasvideoarcade]

There's one thing I don't get:

If I release something under a license that I choose, there's no way that i HAVE to do something. The only thing I do is ALLOW others to do something, but I don't HAVE TO do something (like releasing the source, allowing something etc.). In general, when you release something, you can choose and create any type of license you want. You don't have to agree to any pre-made license type.

So why we have to comply to any type of pre-made license type? What's the benefit?

[BozoDel]

In this case, yodasvideoarcade, you're not creating things from scratch, you're using libraries made by others, so you have to follow their terms. Both GPL and LGPL are made to ensure that improvements made to those libraries will be available to all, but they differ in how radical they are.

Could it be possible to use more permissive licenses for Gamebuino code? I don't think so. tinyFat is LGPL, gamebuino_boot is part LGPL, part GPL (we're gonna have to convince thseiler to allow us to use LGPL).

The library uses Arduino function like digitalRead() but doesn't directly includes code from Arduino

Even if you don't touch the definition of that function, you're using it, and that means it's being compiled into the game, so it counts. I won't go into details about the differences between LGPL and GPL in regards to static or dynamic linking, because with Arduino and Gamebuino, as far as I understand, it's always static, and both licenses apply just the same.

So, yodasvideoarcade, you can either use the tools made available by the Arduino and Gamebuino communities, and comply with the licenses, or you can try putting zeroes and ones together without any help, and then you can license it as you wish.

So yeah, I believe we should go with the LGPL. It's not like we have much choice, and it provides some degree of freedom to gamedevs.

[rodot]

I just checked, the Arduino C/C++ microcontroller libraries are under the LGPL.
So yeah, let's set it LGPL. I have to edit all the files to add the licence headers now >_>

[DFX2KX]

I don't know about all these different license-types. I can just tell what I agree to and what not:

- I agree to releasing my game either for free or paid, depending on what I decide for each title.

- I release my source codes if I want, but only if I want.

- I agree to people modifying my work for personal use if I released the source code, as long as they don't remove my name or anything like that or claim that it's their work or resell or re-publish it without my permission.

Now how do you call this type of license?

It would be nice to make a little cash with the games, but that requires of course that the games are really polished. With "polished" I mean that a game is really finished, with title, decent sounds, levels, good gameplay etc. not just a playable beta.

What you're talking about would involve differant licenses at differant times for differant games, in that regard. There is no license that reads exactly like this. As far as selling games go... I don't THINK anything in Gamebuino's current license says you can't do that, nor does arduino per se. But selling anything for this platform when most of the games are going to be free, is going to be extremely challenging at best, even without the license minefield you're going to have to walk through.

[yodasvideoarcade]

Yeah, sure. I just don't agree with HAVING TO AGREE to making everything public domain.

If I use a library that is public and I create something on top of that, still the thing I created is not public, unless I choose so.

[rodot]

But that would be completely against the open-source spirit!

[BozoDel]

What you're talking about would involve differant licenses at differant times for differant games, in that regard. There is no license that reads exactly like this.

There is no widely known license like that, but one can always make a custom license.

As far as selling games go... I don't THINK anything in Gamebuino's current license says you can't do that, nor does arduino per se. But selling anything for this platform when most of the games are going to be free, is going to be extremely challenging at best, even without the license minefield you're going to have to walk through.

Now that we're settled with LGPL, it shouldn't be as complicated as this discussion makes it seem.

Yeah, sure. I just don't agree with HAVING TO AGREE to making everything public domain.

If I use a library that is public and I create something on top of that, still the thing I created is not public, unless I choose so.

I don't think you're paying attention. No one is talking about public domain, and you couldn't release a game containing LGPL code in the public domain even if you wanted to. I'll try to make it clearer:

Your game is made of code. Some of it is made by others and released as LGPL, some of it is made by yourself.

The parts you made belong to you and only you, and you may license it as you wish.

But the LGPL parts have to remain LGPL (you have to agree with that - if you don't, you're not allowed to use them). That means that you have to give users the right to change those parts. The easiest way to do that is to show people all your code, including the parts made by you, but that doesn't give them the right to use your code as they wish (and you can make that explicit).

The other way to do it is provide users with an object, instead of code, which can be compiled along with the LGPL libraries. I have no idea how to do that, or whether it's possible with *uinos. I'll see if I can find out (Edit: actually, no, I won't, I'm not a programmer, sorry - but from what I could gather, it seems doable).

But what it means is: your game is still yours, only part of it has to be LGPL. And showing your code doesn't make it public domain, and as you can see LGPL is also not public domain, despite being shown. Even Microsoft has a license that allows you to study their code, but nothing beyond that.