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License query

Antidamage
2009-06-02
2013-04-24
  • Antidamage

    Antidamage - 2009-06-02

    Hello there

    I have a question about the GPL license you're using. This may be due to a misunderstanding, so I'll explain my thinking in brief:

    If I were to use xWinForms in my game, the GPL would require me to provide source code for my game as well as the source of any other libraries I've used. For this reason the GPL is incompatible with closed-source libraries such as some physics engines and the use of xWinForms in that situation would be ill advised.

    If my thinking is correct, would you consider switching to a more permissive license? I support free and open software and I'd like to release my own game framework to the wild one day, but there are a number of drawbacks with releasing the actual code to games, in particular multiplayer cheating. I question whether anything GPLed is compatible with an XNA game period, as XNA is a closed license.

    I have a suspicion most people would say "the author doesn't mind, the GPL is just a default license for SourceForge" but I don't think that's the correct response.

    So, if I haven't gotten myself confused and misinterpreted the license, would you consider one that requires redistribution of xWinForms derived code and modifications, but not other bundled libraries? I'm clearly not a license whiz so I don't know any such licenses off hand, but I'd be happy to help find one.

     
    • Antidamage

      Antidamage - 2009-06-02

      I found two licenses that are GPL-compatible but more permissive:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_license
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_license

      Although I don't want to pre-empt you as the GPL may have been something you specifically wanted to license your work under, using these licenses would make xWinForms much easier to integrate into games. Please consider it, xWinForms is amazing and I'm dying to use it in my project.

       

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