ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote

[onpon]

I'm done.

If some of the people here can't see why any part of the GPL is bad for ENIGMA's engine code, my arguments won't convince them. I guess it's not enough that I'm in the majority on this issue. The majority of other open source game engines don't use the GPL because it's not a good fit for proprietary game creation. The GPL is not a one-size-fits-all kind of license; no license is. Shoe horning the GPL with special exceptions is not going to make it fit any better. I'm sorry that some of you can't see that.

With the community this divided, I doubt much will ever become of ENIGMA. I don't see this license issue resolving itself any time soon. This whole process has made me tired and depressed. I'd rather be making games instead of arguing a pointless debate.

Good luck.

Nice FUD you got there.

The majority supports weak copyleft, not avoiding all possibility of the GPL. Don't you know that the MPL 2.0 includes a provision allowing conversion to the GPL? And that this is a good thing, because the GPL is the most prominent copyleft license for software, so we kind of should make all free/libre software that we can GPL-compatible? If you're not deliberately spreading FUD, you're living in some fantasy world where the possibility of a program being under the GNU GPL ruins it somehow.

The reason to use the MPL rather than the GPL + custom exceptions is that it's easier, not that it's better.

[Rusky]

Wow, chill out Rezolyze. The runtime libraries used by GCC and Clang are GPL with this linking exception, and are used by virtually every open source game engine in existence. Further, there's no problem with the definition of "Runtime Library" as it's defined as whatever files the exception is applied to, and thus could be applied equally to ENIGMA's engine.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

It is my attempt to fit the exception to ENIGMA that is in dispute. I'll freely admit I was overzealous in my attempt to do so.

I accept that our use of a custom exception might make ENIGMA less attractive than permissively licensed engines. And I maintain that it will have to be customized to some extent—the GCC linking exception is not only not tailored to ENIGMA, but designed specifically for GCC. These are arguments for people preferring other open-source game engines. This is NOT an argument for people preferring Yoyo's engine. They, too, use a custom license that leaves you completely at their mercy. I'm not sure what people perceive to be the difference. Their EULA has been the subject of scorn since its inception.

But anyway, if you believe an unmodified (on only renamed) GCC linking exception would cover ENIGMA, then I'd lean toward it—that exception takes special care to ensure the freedom of the compiler, which is more than MPL does. My major concern with it was that it doesn't prevent you from creating new versions of the same functions on your side to work around problems in the free version without having to share, but I guess that's just me being picky. The difference between needing a customized version of a free function and hoarding a fixed version of a free function is too thin to define well, I believe.

[Rusky]

"Creating new versions of the same functions on your side" is possible in every scenario except making the games themselves GPL, which is specifically what we're trying to avoid.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

Not if we can separate ENIGMA clones from games. I don't care if a user creates a different version of the same function; I can't have an ENIGMA clone that does so. The dividing line is pretty narrow, as has been discussed.

[Rusky]

Say someone takes the ENIGMA engine under GPL + linking exception, writes some new versions of functions, and produces a clone that links both with the produced games. Plain old GPL prevents this because the games become GPL as well, which is what we're trying to avoid. What other way could you prevent this?

[onpon]

You can't stop people from writing replacements for ENIGMA from scratch. Just look at PySide: someone was unhappy with the PyQt license, so they made their own Qt bindings. You just have to deal with that, but on the bright side, proprietary software developers don't have an unfair advantage.

[Josh @ Dreamland]

Rusky: That's exactly how I want to prevent it. If you clone ENIGMA, everything you sew in to user games must be under GPL + Exception or plain GPL. Preferably the former so we and our users can all use the code, but plain GPL is just fine. Proprietary is not. If you want to sell users libraries, you do so in a way that users rely on free software first, and then your shit second. The best way I can think to take care of it is by voiding out the exception if you're distributing your own ENIGMA. But that's not really what I want... I only want to make sure that everyone has the same access to our engine that you have. That includes shit you patch. No license secures that except unabridged GPL.

onpon: I don't care if you want to write your own proprietary ENIGMA from scratch. Just don't leech off of us.

[edsquare]

Hi I'm new to the forum but wanted to offer my two cents on this topic:

LGPL with an exception is the best way, and you don't even have to write it or find legal advise, some other opensource/freesoftware projects have done so before you.-

wxWidgets has such an exception and the LGPL aspects of the licence protect the library itself, i.e. you can't sell a modified version of the library without providing your changes under the original licence. It does not however affect the applications linking with the library. even statically linking is allowed so you do not need to make some .dll. http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/licence/

Lazarus/FreePascal has such an exception too: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/licensing

What version I think is best?

wxWidgets version, since it protects the project and gives the user the freedom to choose the licensing scheme he/she prefers.

Therefore I vote: none of the above and wxWidgets instead.

[The 11th plague of Egypt]

Thanks for bringing those 2 very nice examples to our attention.

That wxWidgets exception to GPL is a very nice trick. But wxWidgets is a library.

2. The exception is that you may use, copy, link, modify and distribute
under your own terms, binary object code versions of works based on the
Library.

And you can't adapt the license to fit Enigma either

              wxWindows Library Licence, Version 3.1
              ======================================

Copyright (c) 1998-2005 Julian Smart, Robert Roebling et al

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this licence document, but changing it is not allowed.

Interestingly, Lazarus license is a workaround to an incompatibility between GPL and the old MPL license.
Such problems that have been solved since the release of MPL 2.0.

[edsquare]

Thanks for bringing those 2 very nice examples to our attention.

That wxWidgets exception to GPL is a very nice trick. But wxWidgets is a library.

2. The exception is that you may use, copy, link, modify and distribute
under your own terms, binary object code versions of works based on the
Library.

And you can't adapt the license to fit Enigma either

              wxWindows Library Licence, Version 3.1
              ======================================

Copyright (c) 1998-2005 Julian Smart, Robert Roebling et al

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this licence document, but changing it is not allowed.

Interestingly, Lazarus license is a workaround to an incompatibility between GPL and the old MPL license.
Such problems that have been solved since the release of MPL 2.0.

Changing it is not allowed if you are using wxWidgets library and therefore using the license, but, if you were to use it as a template for the Enigma license; and change it's name, and substitue wxWidgets for Enigma in all th text, and change library for engine; it should work perfectly for the purposes and needs of the project.

As a matter of fact I'll take the liberty of contacting the wxWidgets team and ask them if I can use their license as a template, though I think it's not needed since almost all the freesoftware/opensource licenses are also free to use, I have seen many based on the mit license and they even put it in the text of their license.

I'll keep the comunity posted about the results of my findings.

Other than making a new IDE and that is all I can contribute to the project. :-(

[onpon]

That's not how it works. The license is copyrighted; redistributing it is illegal unless you are given permission. You only have that permission if you don't change it.

Of course, if you get permission to distribute your modified license, then you can. But you can't do it without that permission.

[edsquare]

That's not how it works. The license is copyrighted; redistributing it is illegal unless you are given permission. You only have that permission if you don't change it.

Of course, if you get permission to distribute your modified license, then you can. But you can't do it without that permission.

Actually you can, or kind of:

The wxWindows Library Licence is essentially the L-GPL (Library General Public Licence), with an exception stating that derived works in binary form may be distributed on the user's own terms. This is a solution that satisfies those who wish to produce GPL'ed software using wxWidgets, and also those producing proprietary software.

Therefore you can publish the Enigma license, loosely based on the LGPL and wxWidgets licenses, the LGPL license is for everybody to use and even modify or add exeptions; and nobody can use it and then make it copyrighted to the extent where you can't use it.

Also as I said before, you won't use the wxwidgets license but as a template (mainly the exception) for the Enigma License, and if the wxwidgets team give me their blessings every other point is moot.

The clause preventing the modification is there to make sure that wxwidgets will continue to be freesoftware, and that nobody will distribute it with a modified license that allows them or a third party to close the source of the library.

Exactly what the enigma team is looking for, a license that allows the user to publish games under the licensing scheme of their liking and at the same time preventing (Or trying to) that someone can: take the engine, modify it, rebrand it and sell it under a closed source license.

Of course somebody could still try it, but if the enigma team gets an inkling they can take legal action against whoever tries to do so.

Also not only libraries are released under the LGPL.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License

http://wxwidgets.org/about/licence/

[edsquare]

A first atempt at the Enigma Engine License:

[onpon]

It's possible to do basically the same thing, but not by modifying that license, at least not without permission. Ideally, you would use the mechanism that version 3 of the GPL gives to add exceptions (the one that the LGPLv3 uses to work).

The wxWidgets guys must have gotten permission from the FSF to make those license changes.