[gluon] Re: [Kde-games-devel] Licensing for Gluon

[Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen <admin@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 27 January 2010 15:59:32 Stefan Majewsky wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, 27. Januar 2010 12:33:14 schrieb Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen:
> >   Currently, the Gluon codebase contains a number of different licenses,
> > 
> > some of which i understand are incompatible with the KDE license policy.
> > As such, a few of us decided (spurred on by troy) to launch this little
> > discussion about the issue.
> 
> Could you please give an overview which licenses are currently used?

  i do not have the full overview to hand, and the codebase is rather large, 
but i know that there is currently in use at least the following:

 * GPLv2 (Creator)
 * GPLv3 (GluonCore)
 * No license at all (some of the files lack license information entirely)

  As i understand it, specifically GPLv3 is a big problem since it's 
incompatible with KDE's library policy.

> > P.S.: The issue here does not include that of games created using Gluon
> > Creator: The reason for this is that they are irrelevant to this, since
> > they are content, and as such licensed independently.
> 
> The license choice for Gluon _can_ limit the license choice for apps using
> Gluon. For example, GPL libraries may only be linked by GPL applications,
> while LGPL libraries allow any license for linking applications.

  For this bit to make sense, i should probably need to explain what i meant: 
Games created using Gluon Creator are not binaries, but rather a collection of 
assets (some of which are scripts defining game logic). What this means is 
that they are more a kind of document - so for licensing purposes you're 
looking at something much closer to an odf file (which is similarly an archive 
with some assets in it, making up a document) rather than a program.
  You are of course correct that the license of the Gluon libraries /will/ 
impact on games like Blok, which do not use Gluon Creator's method of game 
creation, and that's really why this discussion needs to happen :)

-- 
...Dan // Leinir..
http://leinir.dk/

                          Co-
                            existence
                          or no
                            existence

                          - Piet Hein

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Gluon is a high-level game development library for the KDE desktop enviornment.
http://gluon.tuxfamily.org/
http://gitorious.org/gluon