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General fluff => General ENIGMA => Topic started by: Rezolyze on March 18, 2014, 03:43:38 pm

Title: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Rezolyze on March 18, 2014, 03:43:38 pm
YOU MUST BE REGISTERED AND LOGGED INTO THE FORUMS TO VIEW AND VOTE IN THE POLL. THIS POLL IS MEANT TO GAUGE THE COMMUNITY'S PREFERENCE FOR EACH PROPOSED LICENSE.


ENIGMA's engine code is currently licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPLv3) (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html). The engine code is the part of ENIGMA that is distributed with every game. As a strong copyleft license, the GPLv3 requires that any code linked to GPLv3 code also be licensed under the GPLv3. This means that anyone distributing a game made with ENIGMA is required to distribute their game's source code under the GPLv3 or violate of the terms of the license. Violation of the GPLv3's terms incurs the risk of legal action from one or more of ENIGMA's copyright holders. The proposed solution to this problem is to change the license for ENIGMA's engine code.

I've created a license comparison table (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2270.0) as a starting point for researching each license choice in the poll. Information about a custom license is not in the table because the terms of a custom license were never agreed upon. Please take the time to read about the various licenses in the poll before voting. Please vote sincerely and with all the facts in mind. There is no end date to the poll.


Thank you for participating!


EDIT: The original poll was rewritten and the votes reset, because it had a confirmation bias and wasn't up to date.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: time-killer-games on March 18, 2014, 05:06:26 pm
MPL. no one would really use the engine otherwise. I hope this is the license ENIGMA will migrate to, otherwise I'm giving up on ENIGMA...
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 18, 2014, 06:00:59 pm
I also vote for MPL. My knowledge of licenses basically comes from the discussion topic, but MPL seems the closest to what we want. All of them will have caveats and downsides no matter which we choose. Writing our own which could possibility remove these downsides is impractical (and would probably include loopholes). So keeping parser/compiler GPL (if Josh wants them to be, as he is basically the only one working on those) and keeping the engine MPL for user satisfaction seems good for me. Maybe Josh can concisely point out what he didn't like about MPL. I only remember things about EEE (which I doubt will be much of a problem as we are not doing anything with standards or such) and bug fixes. But as Rezolyze pointed out, we cannot do anything about bug fixes in GPL either. We cannot be sure that the compiled game uses bug fixes in the ENIGMA's engine and we cannot in any way ask him to share these fixes. Even I have a custom ENIGMA installed right now, where there are some modification to the engine I will probably never commit (very specific to some projects, but not very useful for ENIGMA itself). And if you try to sue me for that, I will just probably delete those changes. :D
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 19, 2014, 01:32:39 pm
Yes, the whole situation with a custom license is sticky. I think Gary put it best; we want to stop ENIGMA clones that stop ENIGMA clones. Our inability to put that to a license is certainly problematic.

Also, EEE isn't related to standards, but to features in general. Anyone who can offer all ENIGMA's features (by copying ENIGMA) and additional features on top of that (by doing some closed-source development) poses a risk to the project, as they can continue to feed off of any progress we would make, while giving nothing back. We'd be unable to compete, because our changes would be their changes and their changes would be their changes. The point of stopping ENIGMA clones that stop ENIGMA clones is to ensure that our changes are their changes and their changes are our changes. Mutual benefit, where competition between us benefits both of us and the whole community. If we're being outperformed by a proprietary product in every way, the community doesn't benefit, either.

Still, I'm interested in everyone's thoughts on the matter, so by all means, be expressive.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on March 19, 2014, 02:47:55 pm
If everybody had an ocean, across the USA, then everybodyied be surfin'
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 20, 2014, 09:14:39 am
Quote
Also, EEE isn't related to standards, but to features in general. Anyone who can offer all ENIGMA's features (by copying ENIGMA) and additional features on top of that (by doing some closed-source development) poses a risk to the project, as they can continue to feed off of any progress we would make, while giving nothing back. We'd be unable to compete, because our changes would be their changes and their changes would be their changes. The point of stopping ENIGMA clones that stop ENIGMA clones is to ensure that our changes are their changes and their changes are our changes. Mutual benefit, where competition between us benefits both of us and the whole community. If we're being outperformed by a proprietary product in every way, the community doesn't benefit, either.
And none of the licenses allow this mutual benefit while still allowing games to be sold? Because I have a feeling we might end up risking it anyway. We want to give the users the possibility to sell their games and if that puts us at risk, then be it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 12:52:26 pm
All open-source licenses allow that sort of collaboration, but none of them force it. So no one has to give back to us, or keep their fork of ENIGMA free to use. We want to allow proprietary extensions of ENIGMA that remain exclusively extensions: those that encourage the use of ENIGMA with or without the extension. I want to disallow a proprietary extension of ENIGMA that fixes problems we're facing and forces users to stick with their version, if they don't want bombarded with bugs.

Unexempted GPL makes it harder to sell games, as users are legally entitled to share and distribute them as they see fit. Exempted GPL has the possibility of backfiring if we're not careful, and so behaving like the GPL, but otherwise (in the case of no loopholes) behaves as you'd expect. The MPL behaves as you'd expect, except users have to give us credit for their games, and we're still vulnerable to being outdone with our own code. MIT/zlib/WTFPL/Unlicense behave how you'd expect, and we're completely vulnerable to being outdone with our own code.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 20, 2014, 01:47:33 pm
I am all extremely confused with all of this.
When I first came here I was told that I could sell my games, I seem to get mixed responses.  I was told I could use enigma and sell my games but I would have to tell people I used ENIGMA.  So far so good.  I even asked once if I have to include the source code (EGM) file with my game, and was told no.

Which is it ?  Currently as it stands, can I sell my ENIGMA games that I made or will I be facing a multi million $ lawsuit ?

If that is the case then what is even the point of using enigma ???  The whole point to use ENIGMA from start was better performance, smaller files and windows functions needed for specific projects.  But on the other hand if people cannot sell what they make in ENIGMA then it's a done deal, nobody is going to use ENIGMA - same if required to publish source code (Freeware or commercial).

With GayMakerStudio you do have to include the respective licenses and Yoyo's runner which is YYG's IP, and sadly people will know you used GayMaker to make your games, but at least you don't have to publish source code, so it comes at the cost of all the other issues you will get with GMS......So basically this is very discouraging....the only thing left is to quit using GMS and ENIGMA !

Publishing a source code for a stick figure game or catch the clown is not an issue, but those of us who know fuck all about coding and don't have the time/means to learn programming from the grounds up and who want to make a 100% original game with everything custom made, surely don't want to have to publish source code, which would have far bigger value than a shitty game's source code.  It would be counterproductive to being able to SELL a game for profit and at the same time provide its source code along with the tool used to create it ! lol.

License or not, most people don't read or give a shit :D

Question is, if a person sells an ENIGMA made game, what are they subject to ?
They get sued ,but who sues them ?

So being sued for several millions and doing jail time..... No thanks !

So ENIGMA will never gain popularity and might as well call it dead.

I think it is important to mention on the main page, that 1) you CANNOT sell your games made in ENIGMA 2) You have to release its source code......) As most people won't read the encyclopedia they call license, so why not make it easy for those who don't know what GPL, etc.  works.  Tell them straight forward that they can't sell and have to publish source.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 20, 2014, 03:48:58 pm
Quote
Which is it ?
You can sell your games and not give us source. We don't care the slightest, it's just that we are now trying to make it "official".

Quote
They get sued ,but who sues them ?
No one. No one has ever been sued by a freeware community project. It seems you don't know how "law" works - as in - nobody automatically sues you just because you didn't release source for GPL licenses software. It's up to the developers - us - and we don't have any reason to do that. When we decide on the proper license, we won't be even able to do that (that is why we are moving toward MPL).

Quote
So being sued for several millions and doing jail time..... No thanks !
No one can sue anyone for "millions of dollars" because this is a freeware project and you would have to make millions of dollars off of it. Also, I don't think a person has ever been in jail because of software license issues. The worst thing we could technically do is sue you for some of the money you made off of ENIGMA. So if you sold your game for a total of 100$, I don't see how we could legally ask more than that.

But long story short - We are about to choose a more proper license one and for all and you won't have to worry. The reason for this debate and hesitation is not because we want the possibility to get money from users - it's because we don't want to loose ENIGMA to someone else. That sadly is a possibility with licenses like MPL. Another could technically take ENIGMA, rename it AMGINE, create new features and sell it. And we wouldn't be able to do much in that case. And we want to remove that possibility.

edit: Who chose "MIT, BSD or zlib". Josh?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 20, 2014, 04:48:51 pm
Ok got it.  Indeed I know absolutely nothing about all the licensing structure of open source as I have not been much into that.  So in other words I am to understanding that the actual enforcing of the license depends on the developers and not a 3rd party.

I perfectly understand however, the point that ENIGMA needs to protect itself, however I'm wonder really if there will be something that will benefit both parties equally. I am skeptic about that.  It will have to be either way, either the end-user will have more or ENIGMA development have more.

I think first and foremost, assuming that ENIGMA is not dead as some claim it is, and that it will continue moving forward, that this should be a priority....to protect the software that helps make  those games.
Because without ENIGMA there is no said games and you have to use something else :)

Referencing ENIGMA in your game is never an issue.  Game companies credit their engine all the time in their games (UNREAL, havok, etc.....)  Where I have an issue is releasing source code.   I'd rather share a % of my profits with ENIGMA something like past x amount profit you share %, than releasing my source.  :P

Also the million $ reference that was figure of speech, Unless someone does something spectacularly insanely amazing, I don't think anybody would get close to earning millions from their shit, let alone even a fraction of that !  However some companies are known for frivolous lawsuits.  For example ok we lost $500 in sales let's sue for $500,000.  :D

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 20, 2014, 06:36:27 pm
The choice of license comes down to this: pick a license that protects the people who use ENIGMA or pick a license that protects ENIGMA's code itself. You can try to create a license that attempts to do both, but it will fail in one way or another. If the license places too many restrictions on what can be done with ENIGMA's code, no one will make anything with it. Future development of ENIGMA could be hindered because of such restrictions. You can't know who will want to use your code 10 years from now, for what purpose or how they will modify it. A custom license with lots of specificity is short sighted and will probably need to be changed in the future. Do you really want to go through this again at a later date?

On the other hand, a license with less restrictions runs the risk of someone or some organization using ENIGMA's code in some way that could harm the development of ENIGMA. You're taking a risk with a license like the MPL or an even bigger risk with a license like the MIT, BSD or zlib. The tradeoff is, people aren't afraid to use ENIGMA's code because it's under a well established and trusted license that protects their rights to the code they've written. Such a license covers a broad range of future conditions because the language in it is so general. A good license fosters growth in the community. You get more users which means more bug reports, more project promotion and more future developers of ENIGMA.

If it were up to me, all of ENIGMA would be under the MIT license (although I voted for the MPL). It's incredibly permissive, but it's trusted by corporations and individuals alike. It doesn't do anything to stifle creativity in the people that use MIT licensed code. They can put that code into anything they want and use it for things you can't possibly imagine. It's future-proof and offers true freedom!

The MPL is somewhere in the middle. It's similar in many ways to the GPL, but tries to give users of MPL code as much freedom as possible. The MPL is a compromise. I want a permissive license with simple clauses that can be read in less than a minute and easily understood. I want a license that gives me the freedom to do whatever I want with the game I've created. I want a license that will protect my work from lawsuits and prying eyes. The MPL is the nearest thing to copyleft that I'm willing to stand behind, but I'd prefer something more like the MIT license.

The GPL and other copyleft licenses have their place in the open source world, but not in the realm of closed source commercial games. I realize that ENIGMA's developers want to protect their work, but so do the users of ENIGMA! If you use a license based on a copyleft license or create a license with too many restrictions, NO ONE WILL USE ENIGMA! What good is a game engine that no one uses?

Here's a question for Josh: How useful is ENIGMA's engine without ENIGMA's compiler?

No one is asking that the compiler be anything other than GPL code. We're proposing a compromise to meet the project developers half- way. Please relicense the engine half of ENIGMA under the MPL which is half-way between a copyleft and permissive license. The compiler would remain open and free while the engine would be as open and free as possible without preventing someone from creating whatever they want with ENIGMA. I believe this is the best and most fair solution for all involved.



On a personal note, I'm backing away from this community and this debate. It's been interesting, but very tiring. I really like ENIGMA and I think it has a lot of potential, but there are many more game engines to consider. I've decided to find another engine that has support for mobile platforms as well as desktop. I doubt they'll be as newbie friendly as LateralGM/ENIGMA, but I know I can find one with a license I don't have to argue about. :)

I'll be checking in from time to time; mostly out of curiosity. I still hope this project will become popular and useful among future game developers. I wish you all, and ENIGMA, the best of luck!
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 06:42:56 pm
That's untrue. Even now, you are free to sell your games made in ENIGMA. The catch is that you must provide the full source to the game under the GPL license, thus allowing the free redistribution of it by third parties. That will remain the case until we fix this license issue.

Make no mistake, though. People sell free software—that's the whole reason behind this "Libre" versus "Gratis" deal. Free software is free as in freedom; it is liberated. You can still charge any amount of money per copy, and don't have to distribute the source if you don't distribute a binary. Just be aware that distributing a binary of a GPL program entitles people to its source, and that would make them free to offer it for download, too.

Facing facts, if people want your shit for free, they aren't gonna have to pay. Allowing you to relicense your code just gives you the legal authority to shut down websites distributing your game without your permission.

It's a double-edged sword; you're allowed to go sell copies of ENIGMA to people. But only an idiot would pay you for a copy when they can get it from us for free. And since it's GPL, if you modify it, you have to share your modifications with us. So once again, you'd be stupid to buy it from someone else, unless we simply refused to pull their changes. And if their changes were good enough to warrant you buying their version, that's our loss.

If and when we switch to MPL, we'll lose that benefit. You'll be completely able to keep your game's source to yourself; you'll just have to distribute ENIGMA's source, which is as simple as giving a repository link and revision number, or forking it on GitHub. But on the flip side, people who improve ENIGMA will be able to sell the better versions as their own, and so we'll have to compete with our own product. They'll offer all our features, so the price will be our only leverage. But what's funny is, it'd cost, to be very generous, $200/day to replace this entire team. So if the company did what Yoyo did, for example, and took out a $2M loan, they could pay to match us for around 30 years. Or blow us out of the water for four, at which point we'd be extinct.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 20, 2014, 07:08:56 pm
Quote
if people want your shit for free, they aren't gonna have to pay
Isn't that a quote from the Futuristic Sex Robotz (http://futuristicsexrobotz.net/)?  :D  Long live nerdcore (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerdcore)!
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 07:15:05 pm
Indeed it was.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 20, 2014, 07:57:18 pm
Whoa there, hang on. You forgot the GNU LGPL. If you're going to use weak copyleft, I think that's a much better choice. The MPL really is an artifact of license proliferation that happened in the past, and I think the only time it's really appropriate is when the software in question has something to do with Mozilla software, which ENIGMA doesn't. Plus, the MPL's compatibility with the GPL is complicated (https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#MPL-2.0).

I would be in support of switching to the LGPL. The reason I would support weak copyleft for ENIGMA is if you use strong copyleft, people who want to use a proprietary license are just going to use Game Maker. I don't think ENIGMA is ever going to have enough attractive features to encourage people to switch to using the GPL for their projects, just so they can use ENIGMA instead of Game Maker.

However, it might be useful to keep some extra features that people might find attractive as plugins or something covered by the GNU GPL.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 08:14:08 pm
LGPL is too strong. It forces binaries to be separable—ENIGMA would have to be a DLL, and no one likes that. It also makes it legally impossible for us to use link-time inlining. This has proven a problem for MinGW in the past—you'll notice most of the GNU headers don't even use LGPL.

This is in addition to the fact that it offers little more protection for us than MPL.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 20, 2014, 09:09:21 pm
Still see a lot of contradiction - you are saying I CAN sell my games and nobody would sue me if I don't include my source code, and by source code you mean including the whole EGM file and possibly all its unencrypted resources with it.  Then you go saying I can sell my free stuff ????  Still confused.  Then you are talking about possibility of people selling ENIGMA which obviously you don't want.  The issue and question I have is selling my GAME, not enigma code or modified code.  The games I want to compile with ENIGMA is with an unmodified ENIGMA version.  So if I read your post currently we have to include the source code to everything we publish using ENIGMA.
But previous I was told otherwise.  Again, which is which.  Now you can clearly see people turning away from using the product and to be honest, paying $299 for the YYC compiler sounds more and more attractive :D  (lol, nah fuck YoYo!).

So worse case scenario, if I make my game and I net $1 million, and I get caught, I will have to forfeit my $1 million and the developers will split the money !  Kinda defeats open source if you ask me, you should have opened a company and made a commercial product instead, people would have gladly paid money for a complete working ENIGMA, anything would be best than being allegedly ripped off by a company selling an inflated product they keep regressing with deprecated functions and severe issues that go unaddressed !

@Rezolyze:  I know how you feel and honestly can't blame you.  Good luck on your quest  to find something, if you do please let me know :D  Wherever you go if it is open source you will have the same issues ! Honestly I shopped around and there are other alternatives, but nowhere near newbie friendly than GayMaker & ENIGMA, they have a much steeper learning curve.

YoYo raelly were on to something BIG but instead they decided to fuck it up and now they are trying to fix the mess they created.

I found ENIGMA attractive for:

1) Compiler, so speedy games and minimal size
2) Flexible, offering useful functions that were removed by YYG ! Including external resource handling, directshow support, etc...

However not at the cost of having to provide my source code and resources files no fucking way.

It was NEVER a question of money.  Perhaps ENIGMA
can resolve this whole license shit debate going nowhere and consider going commercial.  I would gladly pay for a product like ENIGMA.  I know that ENIGMA devs would not rip people off charging $300 for a fucking compiler would be part of the program, and they can charge for exports and other stuff.
GLADLY I would pay, and many would too, and it would resolve the whole problems around licensing !
You'd still have to include a license mentioning ENIGMA and its respective IP holders, the same way you have to with GMS, but at least you would not have to include source of your games with your compiles.......:P

No current license proposed will satisfy BOTH parties, impossible.....They all have pros and cons, and either benefit mostly the user OR ENIGMA dev......there is no balance that protects 50 / 50.  So maybe this whole discussion on license is a waste of time :) ???

From what I understand the biggest issue with ENIGMA is compatibility, it is not 100% compatible to GMS.  However, can one assume it is functional enough to make a full game from scratch?



Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 09:24:11 pm
That's because we consistently mince our ideals with our reality.

Right now, we are GPL licensed: you can sell your game, but people have no obligation to buy it from you, because they can get it for free from anyone else. In fact, someone else could sell your game for cheaper than you are selling it. Both of you have to offer the same source, however, so someone would end up giving it out it for free. If the person selling your game didn't give out the source, you could sue them; if you weren't giving out the source to your game, any ENIGMA developer could sue you. Harri is pointing out that it's safe to operate on the assumption that no ENIGMA contributor would want to sue you, however, and so you could theoretically ignore the GPL altogether and do what you like. However, that is not your legal entitlement at this time.

When we finish working out the license, we are doing everything in our power to ensure that you can choose your own license and be the deciding power on the distribution of your own games. But that is later. When we get this sorted out, you will have the law to back you up. For now, you have only our word, which as nasty as it sounds, we could renege on at any time.


The point of the new license is so that you have a legal guarantee to what we're telling you that you can do with your game. Instead of just trusting us not to sue you. You have the same problem when you use GM:S; you're agreeing to a contract you've never seen before between you and Yoyo Games. But for some reason, this seems natural to everyone because they're proprietary! Having licenses with free software is unheard of. I'll grant it's unusual, because usually free software is all about liberties, but we're unique in that we are granting you the special right to take everyone else's right (the right to use and distribute your game freely) away. You can argue all day about whose right that should be, but according to the GPL, it isn't yours. And that's what we need to fix.

So, to reiterate,

Right now, from a legal standpoint, you must distribute the source to your game if you distribute your game, regardless of whether you're charging for the binary. Others are free to distribute it for you, with or without a fee. So your payment would be on the honor system (as it basically is, anyway).

Right now, we are telling you (giving you our word, but not a legal guarantee) that we will not sue you, and you can do what you want. We could turn evil and sue you anyway, though.

In the future, we will have a license that guarantees you our word is good. Picking that license is hard, as people expect us to use a standard free software license or else they'll prefer Yoyo, who uses a non-standard proprietary license (makes the sense none this any of does to me, but that in itself is a bad argument).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 20, 2014, 09:42:34 pm
Interesting thanks for that, this opens a door to something else.  So basically what exactly is meant by I have to release my source ? Do I have to include the EGM file in the same folder as the compiled EXE ?  So basically the source (EGM) file would also contain ALL the game resources I busted my ass to create right ? So this means it would completely prevent me from using external / encrypted resources and big games as I would have to also distribute my game resources as well for the EGM to work.  So this would void the point of selling games as anybody could steal my game source and resources and make their own game using another program.   

Also on the topic of being sued.......Do people really get sued ? Rarely do I hear of big companies automatically going into lawsuits without first sending s&D and warnings of retraction. 

So in the case of ENIGMA, what is the worst that could happen ? The developers could require you STOP distributing your games immediately OR provide the source within a reasonable time.....It's hard to imagine they would go right ahead and "SUE" you, right ? wrong ? Also, again, you'd have to be caught.  There are many selling their shit games they made with a cracked GMS on the app stores.... I guess even YoYo mentioned it would not automatically SUE people for using  cracks, but it would only if the game generates profits big enough to warrant the entire process of taking legal actions, EVEN THOUGH the law entitles them to sue regardless on the amount, does not mean they will necessarily..... So I'm assuming ENIGMA is the same.

As far as YoYoGames, I am not aware of any hidden contract.  You are the copyright holder of the game you make and are entitled to do whatever you want.  However YYG are the IP holders of the engine (gay runner) etc.  The contract and limitations is if you decide to publish your games through YYG, however if you decide to publish on your own, your only restrictions are including the YoYoGames license and mention the respective copyright holders.....in this case, the runner / engine belongs to YYG.  Your game belongs to you.

I guess maybe it would have been better for ENIGMA to be a paid product, none of this mess :D
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 20, 2014, 09:49:40 pm
Also on the topic of being sued.......Do people really get sued ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSF_vs._Cisco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center#BusyBox_Litigation
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 20, 2014, 10:06:32 pm
Also on the topic of being sued.......Do people really get sued ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FSF_vs._Cisco
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Law_Center#BusyBox_Litigation

I should rephrase my question.  Do people get automatically sued ?  usually one would get a warning to stop distributing games, etc.  One would probably get sued if the amount of money is substantial.
Also as per CISCO there was a settlement right ?
Most of the time it is in the best interest for these things to be resolved off court.  So the developer has to comply and stop distributing said software and give the profits they made from said software.  Question now is, how the fuck do the developers determine the exact amount / profits made.

If companies out there exercised their rights as the law permits, entirely by the book, then they would probably spend most of their days in court and millions would get sued daily.  :P 

If you were to steal a $1 chocolate bar from me I could sue you for theft, as the law permits. What I am permitted under the law and do is another story.

Microsoft knows that people are using pirated copies of Windows.....They even warn you if you are using a non genuine version and even encourage you to buy it.  They COULD if they wanted to track you down and sue you for copyright violation and theft.
God forbid if most companies exercised ALL their rights down to the T, there would be a fuckload of lawsuits and there would be nowhere to put serial killers, rapists and hard criminals.  They'd have to build entire city length jail and courts to cater to the high demand and all the people that get their a$$ sued !

So I guess one bit of advice for now.......If your game CAN be made in CrapStudio 1.3, go for it, and sleep while at night.  Otherwise if you don't want to suck their cock and be their slave and deal with the mess that their software has become, then ENIGMA is the right choice, but you have to sell your soul first.

No middle grounds lol. 

Damned if you do damned if you don't.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 10:31:52 pm
No one can sue you except the authors of the code you used. So, only members of the ENIGMA team. But notably, any member of the ENIGMA team who can prove you are using his or her code. So the odds of someone becoming evil are increased by some 600%, and more so by the fact that some of us are only just becoming financially independent. It's a risk, for users.

But yes, you're at risk of litigation whether you use ENIGMA right now or use GM:S. If you're playing by the rules of the GPL, there's nothing that we could successfully sue you for. But that means payments for your games would be on the honor system, and you wouldn't have special and exclusive rights to them, and that's definitely something for us to be concerned with. Petty theft of simple but fun games is more common than you'd think.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: time-killer-games on March 20, 2014, 10:49:27 pm
Fuck this topic is a boring read. I'm surprised I picked up any of this. When in doubt, we could always flip a coin or rock paper scissors our way into deciding a new license? I'd find that to be the most rational decision with the given circumstance.

Edit: All I mean by that is that all the license options have their pros and cons, and IMHO, each one has bad enough cons to send this project in the toilet doo-doo hole either way, so it's irrelevant which one we choose. But we need to find a way to "get the best of both worlds" if you know what I mean, that's right, Hannah Montana. I personally find a custom license a best fit, now that I think of it. Is it possible to make a custom non-GPL lisence?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 20, 2014, 10:59:20 pm
No one can sue you except the authors of the code you used. So, only members of the ENIGMA team. But notably, any member of the ENIGMA team who can prove you are using his or her code

Ok, this part is perfectly clear and I understand. 
So there are 2 things I have to do, link to ENIGMA mentioning I used ENIGMA *AND* include source code which is either the EGM file or EGM + external resources (if applicable).  So if  i decide NOT to supply source code but only link to ENIGMA, that would be giving myself away.... So most people would simply not do either.  Christ I never knew this was such a pain in the arse, who the hell would want to use ENIGMA from this point on ?

Here are things I am wondering about:
1)
BUT here is another problem.  Let's say a person decides to comply and include a link to the ENIGMA repo + supply source material with the game along with the proper license, 100% by the book.  Developer can't be sued right ?  Maybe not, but it opens the door to far bigger problems.  So the person who has paid for my game eventually finds out WHAT I used to make my shit, and even more, has the entire source AND resources along with a link.  He/she/IT could simply use said tool and compile my game and go "hmmm.....this game is free, and some motherfucker charged me $15".  So the developer
gets the heat, charge backs, and reputation ruined.
In other words how the fuck can a developer be able to SELL and PROFIT from a game made in ENIGMA, when the game is free to be distributed by anybody else even FREE of charge, even by the person downloading your game can find out they could have had it for free !  I hope you understand where I am going with this......It would be nearly impossible for a developer to sell and profit from a game made in ENIGMA.

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. So the odds of someone becoming evil are increased by some 600%, and more so by the fact that some of us are only just becoming financially independent. It's a risk, for users.

Regardless, taking legal actions against someone is not as easy as pushing a button.  It's a lot of paper work and expense.  I mean regardless of your financial situation, would you sue me if I made $100 profits from my shitty game ?  It would cost you far more than $100.   Otherwise it all comes down to principles and not money.  Most companies know it is in their best interest to resolve outside courts, it's better for their wallets and public image.   Why are some companies more lenient now toward modders...... no company wants negative press.

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But yes, you're at risk of litigation whether you use ENIGMA right now or use GM:S.

Please enlighten me.  What kind of litigation ? I paid for GM:S and only requirement I am aware of is
including a license of all IP holders, including YoYoGame's runner.  But you are not required to include your source code ! You can sell your game on your own, you own the rights to your game, and YoYo owns the rights to their runner ,which cannot be modified.  Right now to be honest I am very discouraged and I am trying to think of a good reason why I should continue using ENIGMA....I really like the software and the developers are quite different than YYG's developers, there is every bit of reason to use ENIGMA because of its potential, but if I have to be brutally honest, all this talk about the license and
evil and lawsuits and source code  etc really negates all benefits from the project.

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If you're playing by the rules of the GPL, there's nothing that we could successfully sue you for. But that means payments for your games would be on the honor system, and you wouldn't have special and exclusive rights to them,

Josh, I am fucked either way.  If I follow the rules then this means I accept that my game source and its resource be freely available including theft and distributed FREELY.  I'm quite sure the people who pay money for my game would NOT appreciate finding out the same game could be had FREE. 

Let me give you an example.....You know this free flight sim called FlightGear?  It's open source.  The same flight sim is rebranded and  sold on ClickBank for hundreds of $.  I heard a lot of complaints and people charging back their clickbank purchase once they found out they could obtain same software FREE.  I was warned by someone I know who purchased the thing.

So I'd have the right to sell my game, but at the same time it could in theory be distributed freely,
and if not distributed, the person downloading it could realize they could compile a  FREE version and think they got scammed, the same way people who purchased the Pro Simulator on ClickBank felt ripped off.

What does this mean for ENIGMA, your project is also in danger bceause people will not be using ENIGMA with all of this mess..... So leaving the license as is, protects you, but what good is it if nobody will use your software.

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and that's definitely something for us to be concerned with. Petty theft of simple but fun games is more common than you'd think.

I know, software piracy is all around.  But that's a different issue.  A developer who invests sweat and blood into making his / her game with 100% custom made material wants to protect their work.....Not
give away their source and material for the masses to use.

---------------------------------

I think ENIGMA's site should remove the you can sell your game part or add that you have to include source or get sued by the devs. of the code you use in your game :D  The majority of people who use these software are newbies who are not coders and many don't know all these licensing terms.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 20, 2014, 11:31:38 pm
Most people with GPL games simply accept donations. An alternative is to have a purchase page, and offer a free download for users "who have already paid." Of course, they're not obligated to be honest, legally, but it prevents pirates from selling your game for you. You can also do some GPL trolling of your own to ensure that any third-party who is distributing your game is following the license and crediting you in the distribution.

An evil ENIGMA contributor suing you is an unlikely scenario given the overhead of filing a court case, the unlikelihood of being represented by the FSF's lawyers given that the act would be contrary to the spirit of this project, and the statistical unlikelihood of financial payout. But if you are making heaps of money, that starts to go away, and the odds of someone evil wanting their cut is greatly increased. So users would fear their ENIGMA games growing big while they are violating the GPL.

Regarding FlightGear: That's what allowing you to relicense your game is for. But I would argue that in that case, those who paid SHOULD be upset—from what I'm hearing, they are successfully selling it only because their brand is more popular, and it isn't their work to be sold. In your case, however, you are the original author: people shouldn't feel cheated buying your game from you. I got Cave Story for free on the PC. Nicalis teamed up with Pixel and re-released it for the PC and Wii. I bought a copy, not because I really cared about the special features, but because it was an easy way to show my support. I bought Portal 2 for $50 knowing full well I could get it for $20 or less the next month. I'd do it again. I had the option of pirating all of those games illegally, of course, but even if I could have legally obtained them for free, I would have paid for them. People have a lot of success with pay-what-you-want digital property.

But anyway, I am not advocating that all of our users switch to GPL. The GPL is just my personal philosophy. I would encourage it where applicable, but getting it to where users can select there own license is still a priority. I am just trying to make sure that any further proprietary game development environments are not my fault.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 20, 2014, 11:58:05 pm
I just want to point out some things (some repeats since I started typing before Josh's post above):

- Just because the engine of the game you write is under the GPL doesn't mean your art assets are. I don't know if it's been tested in court, but it's commonly accepted that the game's data, e.g. art assets and scenarios, can be GPL-incompatible. Even completely free/libre games often choose the GPL-incompatible CC BY or CC BY-SA license for such assets, and there are several games whose engines are under the GPL, but whose game data is proprietary. Examples include Doom, AssaultCube, Planeshift, Gish, and The Ur-Quan Masters, among others.

- Just because people can obtain something without paying doesn't mean they won't pay. Supporting the developer of a game you like feels good. In fact, when people are given an option up-front of how much to pay, the average is usually well above the minimum; I recall one example of the "pay what you want" system where the minimum was $1, and the average people were paying was $3. People aren't really as rationally greedy as the capitalist model suggests.

- Just because people can provide something gratis doesn't mean they will. I actually looked to see if I could find copies of some of Jason Rohrer (http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-rohrer/)'s games' source code so I could see what they were like before paying; these games are in the public domain, so it's perfectly legal to share. I found no such copies. It's easy to understand why if you think about it: people don't just instinctively upload everything they have a copy of somewhere on the Internet just because it's legal. They only do so if they have a reason to, and they usually only have a reason to if there's a huge demand for copies that don't cost anything. If you're at that point, you've already made a lot of money selling copies.

- Selling copies of a game isn't the only way to make money from it. If it's an online game, you can make money from server access; no proprietary software is needed for this. Crowdfunding might also be a way to get the money upfront: basically, being paid to make the game (though I don't think this has been tested much if at all).

- The point of using the GPL isn't to protect the program licensed under it; it's to protect the freedom of the users of the program. Whether or not it's worth it, that depends. I don't think it's worth it to use strong copyleft in ENIGMA's case, because people who would make non-libre game engines would just use Game Maker instead of ENIGMA. Weak copyleft should be used. But to say that it's bad simply because it results in less users ignores the whole point of the GPL. If ENIGMA was attractive enough that it could convince people to use the GPL rather than switching to Game Maker, using the GPL would make perfect sense.

- The Flightgear thing was done by a third party, and that's what made people upset: they were just putting a big price tag on something that was made by someone else and given to them gratis. If the Flightgear devs had been selling the copies and a third party had been giving away copies, it would have been very different.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 21, 2014, 03:41:58 am
Most people with GPL games simply accept donations.

Scenario 1: Hey people I made a stick figure game with 8x8 sprites kindly donate your money for my hard work.

Scenario 2: I made this motherfucker of a game, it has 3D, it has cut scenes, it has original content, music, graphics, if you like MYST this is MYST on steroids..... But I am giving you this 4GB game FREE, BUT if you want kindly donate.......

I think you are being generous on human nature Josh. We are in 2014......People would be willing to rip off good $1-$5 games sold in app stores if they could get it free.  Face it, the only donation I might get is $1 from the guy who will gladly take my source and assets and rebrand it and sell it on fucking Clickbank like the rest of the rebranded shits selling there.....  FREE software sold for $100-$200 on Clickbank......it's pathetic.  I think I get the point of GPL to some extent but it has a VERY evil side to it
and I don't like the smell of it.

Now I am thinking...... ENIGMA devs KNEW what they were getting into when doing open source... They COULD have just made the software a shareware (FREE edition, standard, PRO, etc) problem solved.  But the team decided free open source.

So now, you are telling me that if my game goes viral and is a hit and I "do well", leaving it so vague as to what you would consider "doing well" before you join the darkside and sue me :D you would go after me because even though I mentioned I used ENIGMA
but failed to provide my source code along with all game content I created from scratch....... hmmm.
Even though I did not modify or sell ENIGMA, just making games with it, and acknowledged it, but ENIGMA devs have the right to go after developers because they didn't spread the source code allowing pirates and people with bad intentions to rip your game and sell it or distribute it free ?

Under the current license I am willing to bet nobody will want to use ENIGMA for making games. 

After checking, regarding GameMakerStudio, the only requirements are to include the respective licenses and IP holders along with your game.  They don't require source code distribution.  They do fuck developers in the ass some other ways though  ;D
So it now is a matter of picking your poison :P

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An alternative is to have a purchase page, and offer a free download for users "who have already paid." Of course, they're not obligated to be honest, legally, but it prevents pirates from selling your game for you. You can also do some GPL trolling of your own to ensure that any third-party who is distributing your game is following the license and crediting you in the distribution.

I don't want my games to be distributed by others nor sold by others.  And the last thing I want to see is my $10 game being sold for $200 on Clickbank lol.

If this forum had 1000 ENIGMA users, how many do you honestly believe would want that ? :P  Why do you think YYG was under lots of heat for their weak ass security and how games could be decompiled !
People don't want their source stolen or games ripped off.

If I spend 3 years making a great game why should I accept that some random motherfucker acquires my game for free and sells it and profits / makes big bucks from it, while I make pennies or nothing.

ENIGMA wants to protect its code and you mentioned the reasons why, which is fine........ But seriously, so does the game developer too.  Right now the game developer has no protection.

basically it is like having a bank account with loads of money in it, unlocked and open to the public, with a sign that says "Hey, I have received an inheritance, it's in my bank you are free to come rob me at  your convenience, I'll even give you the key!"

:D

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An evil ENIGMA contributor suing you is an unlikely scenario given the overhead of filing a court case, the unlikelihood of being represented by the FSF's lawyers given that the act would be contrary to the spirit of this project, and the statistical unlikelihood of financial payout. But if you are making heaps of money,

lol define heaps ? I mean seriously, how much could one expect to make, couple of hundreds at most ? if you are lucky.  Some popular GM made game despite media coverage failed to earn more than few hundreds......Probably what it would cost to do the paperwork :D

So if my game makes millions I could just run away to some remote island (if I knew your addy I could send you a generous donation :D :D :D)

Seriously I think there are good solid arguments here as to why this whole licensing thing should get resolved and resolved as quick as possible.
But if you do decide to scrap open source free and sell it, I will be your first paid customer, providing of course the software is functional.

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that starts to go away, and the odds of someone evil wanting their cut is greatly increased. So users would fear their ENIGMA games growing big while they are violating the GPL.

There could be loopholes or ways to get around that.

Example, you make the core of your game, include few levels, sort of a limited edition, and make it  free.  If people want to buy the full version, instead of buying a new compiled EXE they would be buying CONTENT, that they could plug into your game, think of it as they are buying a DLC.  You have previously coded your free game EXE to handle the DLC format you will be using. SO.....the person is buying an extension of your game as a DLC, to which you made entirely on your own without use of ENIGMA....
Now I know what  you are thinking....."But anybody could see your custom decryption in the source"
lol.  Well you could code your decrypter using another program and have it called from ENIGMA.  So they could see in your source, calls to external programs,
but still won't know what to do.

Does providing the source code only relate to games SOLD ? or both for profit and free ENIGMA made games?

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Regarding FlightGear: That's what allowing you to relicense your game is for. But I would argue that in that case, those who paid SHOULD be upset—from

EXACTLY!!! And I am glad you said that.  People ARE upset.  I know a few people who got had from this, I think it is called FlightSimPro, they all filed for refund, as they have a 60day refund policy.....and ClickBank has to abide.

So put yourself in our shoes.....Trying to make money, but people finding out that our games can be had for free and start charging back...What do you
think that  does to a PayPal account or any payment processor ? They cut you off.

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what I'm hearing, they are successfully selling it only because their brand is more popular,

They are SHIT.  You can get the same software FREE, online, the core + the entire world scenary DVDs, you can order them or download them FREE.  People who buy Clickbank garbage are not aware that majority of products sold in that garbage dump of a network can be had for FREE online and often with better support and faster performance as sometimes the shit they rebrand on CB have wrappers / advertising / upselling crap.

I've made couple of purchases on CB myself, in 100% of my purchases the product I received was hype and did not deliver as per claims.....so it was refund in all cases......Then I found out I  could often get the same software *FREE* or at a much better price.

I see a lot of GNU software being rebranded and distributed by some network affiliates / advertisers who WRAP those apps with malware, trojans, adware, spyware and place them on offer walls
on GPT sites and advertising networks......People
downloading the crap complain and it ruins the reputation of the original developer who made the software, because people think the malware comes from the original developer......

The way I see it OpenSource was a bad idea for ENIGMA or ANY worthwhile program that can be used for evil potentially damaging the reputation of its respective authors, unless there is a solid license
that protects developers because they are the ones
who worked their ass to make the game, while at the same time protecting ENIGMA.....why the hell is it so difficult to cover both arses ?  Remember ENIGMA would be nothing without people using it, and scared shitless.....the same that the game developer using ENIGMA would be nowhere without ENIGMA and stuck sucking YYG's cock.

I still can't believe that there can't be custom / exemptions particularly for developers, such as
requiring they mention ENIGMA and link to it, but
not having to release source code and game content.

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and it isn't their work to be sold. In your case, however, you are the original author: people shouldn't feel cheated buying your game from you.

Yeah? And what happens when later people find out that the same game I sold them, can be had for FREE or less $...Who's going to be blamed, I WILL, I will be accused of ripping people off, and people will chargeback.  Even worse, I am telling people "Hey, the game you just paid me $20 for, includes all my source code and ALL my content along with it and even a link to the FREE ENIGMA....so you can even install it and compile my source code, but wait, you could have gotten my game FREE and you were never legally obliged to even pay me !"

I don't think people would be happy... You know how internet works.......Word goes around and before
you know it it's all over facebook, twitter, youtube,
etc.

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I got Cave Story for free on the PC. Nicalis teamed up with Pixel and re-released it for the PC and Wii. I bought a copy, not because I really cared about the special features, but because it was an easy way to show my support. I bought Portal 2 for $50 knowing

You have good intentions.   You are part of a minority so one must always assume the worse.  Piracy, game theft, etc is a major problem.....the whole idea with
copy protection is to deter piracy, obviously it dose not completely eliminate it.

But giving away source code + my game content is
encouraging it and facilitating it!  Because if I were to use proprietary encryption of my external game resources, anybody could use my source code and decrypt and steal all my game assets, easily......

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But anyway, I am not advocating that all of our users switch to GPL. The GPL is just my personal philosophy. I would encourage it where applicable, but getting it to where users can select there own license is still a priority. I am just trying to make sure that any further proprietary game development environments are not my fault.

It's sad.  Essentially GM is getting stronger and ENIGMA is ..... well I read some people using the term "vaporware" before !  is this true ?

So I guess I have to make sure my game are shitty enough never to be a major hit that can get me
sued but at the same time not too shitty enough to be sold and make a few bucks..... :D

Imagine once you will be able to render video /cut scenes inside surfaces and make those myst like games on steroids, it's not improbable that under the right hands a developer could make good money.....
but once they see that ENIGMA has potential but
its weakest link is its license, then they will look
elsewhere.

@TKG:  How would you feel once your Dungeon Blabber game is done, it takes you 3 years of hard work, then you release it, but with the current license it gives people the right to RIP off all your content, pirate and re-sell your game.  Would you accept that ?
Would you be happy ?

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on March 21, 2014, 03:52:37 am
Thanks for asking the community about this choice, and taking the time to go through with this.
I thik can feel some of your love for this project and its community now :)

I still like the middle ground, and hope eventual conflicts can be solved.

BTW when this is done, we could go register a trademark :D
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 21, 2014, 04:00:35 am
Thanks for asking the community about this choice, and taking the time to go through with this.
I thik can feel some of your love for this project and its community now :)

I still like the middle ground, and hope eventual conflicts can be solved.

BTW when this is done, we could go register a trademark :D

LOL!


Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 21, 2014, 01:08:06 pm
Darkstar2: You keep blowing all of this out of proportion and type very emotionally. So to wrap it up:
1) There is no automatic suing robot. And GPL doesn't mean that a random person can sue you. The only ones who could sue anyone is ENIGMA dev's.
2) As you already said, suing is time and money consuming. So it's virtually impossible that anyone from ENIGMA dev team would be active enough to do so. Only maybe Robert during one of his sissy fits could summon the time (but not money) to sue someone. But even he is too lazy for that.
3) That is why we a trying to choose a license. It's not that if we don't do so in the next 24h the world will explode. The discussions have been massive on the subject and I don't think much more will happen. We basically have two possibilities when thinking about users: MPL and possibly endanger ENIGMA at some point or other license with custom exceptions/custom license which are both a lot riskier (as it normally requires a very expensive legal staff to be done properly).
4) That "ENIGMA is dying" or "no one will use ENIGMA" are both stupid statements. I have been here since 2008 (that's 6 years for the mathematically impaired) and I can tell you that nothing has really changed. We work on it as we see fit and at the pace we have time for. It will probably be the same in the next 6 years as well. The leaps in functionality have been tremendous during the past year though. And could be as big this year.

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copy protection is to deter piracy
And almost exclusively does the opposite. I, like Josh, have paid for games that are available for less or even free, because I enjoyed them. Look at Humble Bundle for example. Some pay 1000$ for 5 games and in turn that person compensates for 500 who paid only $1. But most pay more. Just like Game Newel from Valve said - Piracy is a service problem. That means if a pirate gives better service, like when a single player games that work without a constant internet connection using a crack, but requires internet connection otherwise, then the user will choose the crack. Many people play with cracked games even though they have legal copies for them. Especially few years back when CD's where mandatory for games - NoCD cracks flourished. There have been many instances when a pirate could get a game, install the game, play the game and then even finish the game days before the legit user could. Only because the legit user needed to wait 3 days before DRM servers were back online (happened with AC, Diablo3, Battlefield, COD and so on). In Humbe Bundle you can also see that the ones who pay more are usually Linux users, those who's software are usually free (and GPL'd).
I for example now buy games almost exclusively from GOG.com. They never have DRM and so I can buy a game, install it and play it within 15minutes. No fuss with DRM's.
So in short - Yes, people will buy games they can download for free. Children won't, because they don't have money. But people with jobs will. That is why I torrented all games when I was 10-18 years of age, but now haven't downloaded an illegal game in years. I buy all of them because I can and I want too.

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Trying to make money, but people finding out that our games can be had for free and start charging back...
They weren't trying to get back money because the software was free. They were trying to get money back because they were essentially scammed. Another took the source, didn't even add anything to it, and then sold it as their own. I am sure most of the people who bought and enjoyed the software would of easily paid the 40$ to the real dev's. But they were upset that they basically paid a nobody.

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People don't want their source stolen or games ripped off.
TBH, those are only children who even make "fake companies" just to have a logo in front of the game. AAA games or even Inide devs couldn't give less shits about that. GPL, as far as I know, doesn't even require you to provide other resources. So you can provide the code, but all the other resources could be removed from that. The thing is though, that resources are extremely easy to get from any game or program. It takes seconds for you to launch a debugger, open a game, and save a texture (that included sprite sheets and so on). As that is very easy, most developers, big and small, don't hide those resources. If you download any Source engine game, for example, then in the folders there are plain resources for your taking. Same with Unreal, Cryengine and so on.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 21, 2014, 03:10:09 pm
Darkstar2: You keep blowing all of this out of proportion and type very emotionally. So to wrap it up:
1) There is no automatic suing robot. And GPL doesn't mean that a random person can sue you. The only ones who could sue anyone is ENIGMA dev's.

As I mentioned before, I understand that part.

As to blowing things, sorry but since I am very serious about using ENIGMA and have lots in mind, I want to get all my bases covered.  My intentions are to build using ENIGMA from scratch as opposed to simply importing GMS files.  I've already mentioned many times the reasons why I don't like GMS anymore (at least for the things I want done).  To be honest, the things I can do in GMS I will keep doing in GMS.  So far I know people who have sold their games made in GMS and made several hundreds of $ and have not been sued by anyone yet.

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2) As you already said, suing is time and money consuming. So it's virtually impossible that anyone from ENIGMA dev team would be active enough to do so. Only maybe Robert during one of his sissy fits could summon the time (but not money)

I'll keep that in mind about Robert (noted :D)  but he said "some of us are financially independent now" and while we don't intend to sue you, we could do it.  I kinda see where he is going, he is covering his base, the  same way I want to cover mine.

I don't mean to offend anybody by saying this, but when you (meaning the team) decided to make this project open source, you probably knew the pros / cons and that eventually something like this would come.  Perhaps it would have been a better idea not to make it open source but a shareware with limited functionality with a path to upgrade to a PRO version that allows selling, and doing whatever ...  Like I said, I would have gladly paid for something like ENIGMA.

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3) That is why we a trying to choose a license. It's not that if we don't do so in the next 24h the world will explode.

Nobody said that, however, in my opinion, these discussions have been trailing for ages, and GM is gaining grounds right now despite its flaws, again I stress, in my opinion, I think this matter of licensing is not too healthy for ENIGMA.

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The discussions have been massive on the subject and I don't think much more will happen.

:D I don't think so either.  I have never dealt with licensing or distributed software free or paid so forgive my ignorance on the matter, but what if ENIGMA decided to stop becoming open source and simply become a shareware, with possibility of getting a paid version free of all those limits ? Would that be a solution (it would benefit ENIGMA financially to keep working on ENIGMA) and benefit developers without some dodgy license ???

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We basically have two possibilities when thinking about users: MPL and possibly endanger ENIGMA at some point or other license with custom exceptions/custom license which are both a lot riskier (as it normally requires a very expensive legal staff to be done properly).

Exactly, so there is no perfect option and never will be.

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4) That "ENIGMA is dying" or "no one will use ENIGMA" are both stupid statements. I have been

I have never said this myself, but read people mention it here and elsewhere.  To be honest maybe I agree to some extent, as I see more people mention they could not make any games with ENIGMA and lots of issues than people who claimed to have made complete games.    As far as "no one will use ENIGMA" I said it in the context that if there is so many restrictions on what a developer can do with their published games, I don't think people will want to use ENIGMA, in fact nobody would under the current circumstances (by that I mean compile and publish a game).

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here since 2008 (that's 6 years for the mathematically impaired) and I can tell you that nothing has really changed. We work on it as we see fit and at the pace we have time for. It will probably be the same in the next 6 years as well. The leaps in functionality have been tremendous during the past year though. And could be as big this year.

....yet the forums are inactive (same people posting) and I don't hear much about game titles released using ENIGMA.  Sorry for my skepticism though, I think I am entitled to an opinion, but based on what I am seeing, I have some reservations as to whether ENIGMA will gain more grounds.  However I am working hard to trying to do some workarounds and use ENIGMA as much as I can, but with this whole discussion on licensing, it sets me off a little. 

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And almost exclusively does the opposite. I, like Josh, have paid for games that are available for less or even free, because I enjoyed them.

Good for you, but not everyone is like that.  Yes protection when done right can deter piracy to some extent.   When it is badly implemented so much that it interferes with paying customers (hint-hint) then that is not a good thing.

Regarding cracks and piracy, not everyone who buys a game is aware of cracks or where to look.  The whole idea is to make it harder and more challenging as opposed to publishing a title with zero protection that just about ANYBODY could copy.

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game and then even finish the game days before the legit user could. Only because the legit user needed to wait 3 days before DRM servers were back online (happened with AC, Diablo3, Battlefield, COD and so on). In Humbe Bundle you can also see that the ones who pay more are usually Linux users, those who's software are usually free (and GPL'd).

That's true :P  and there are cases where people purchased games and could not even run it due to faulty DRM, many asking their money back or using a crack (UBISOFT anybody ??? :D)   Right, but fact remains piracy is an illegal right for whatever reason.
Of course people who already paid for the game and use a crack as a temporary measure that is another issue, still the law is the law, and illegal is illegal, but in my opinion are one of the more permissive reasons.  I don't recall UBISOFT going after people with cracks when they had problems with some of their past games and DRM, people were openly admitting to using cracks.  In fact if not mistaken even UBISOFT allegedly encouraged it and used it at some point to break their own damn DRM.  lol.

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I for example now buy games almost exclusively from GOG.com. They never have DRM and so I can buy a game, install it and play it within 15minutes. No fuss with DRM's.

Exactly, but it means it has the potential of being copied more.  No protection, anybody can copy.  Protection, limits the damage, because only people who are familiar on how things work or know where to get those cracks, etc. will get through.  Try polling
10,000 PC gamers who buy their games and you'd be surprised that not everyone knows what "CRACKS" is, or where to get them..... Some people simply buy games, install and play and don't have the know how about serials, cracks, etc.

Personally I would not use DRM in my games, however I would use my own encryption and resource system.  YES it's pointless to keep telling me about debuggers and how people can rip my content from memory, I know this already, BUT it will deter most people, as not everyone is familiar or has the knowledge to do so.

BUT release a game with the WAV and graphics file in plain view, and it makes it much easier.

That is the point I'm making. 

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They weren't trying to get back money because the software was free. They were trying to get money back because they were essentially scammed.

You and I both know, but try telling this to a customer who just purchased your game online, only later to find out it was distributed freely because of some GPL license allowed it.... Who do you think the customer will blame...... He/she will blame you and call you the scammer and charge back.

In the case of FlightPro not only were they ripping off people with an inflated price for software that was not their own, but they were selling the entire DVD contents which could be had FREE through download from the authors....  More so the version sold on Clickbank has a wrapper (adware/spyware) - Luckily some people did their researched and started blogging about this and warning people.

Do you want the same happening to your games ?

Not me.

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Those are only children who even make "fake companies" just to have a logo in front of the game.

Sorry but 1) I am not "children" and 2) I have strong principles !  I don't rip software developers, and so I expect mine not to be ripped.  You don't have to be a kiddie to want to protect your games, especially games that are 100% original in all aspects.  Maybe you can laugh at the "kids" who want to protect their catch the clowns, stick figure games and mario clones, but it is only reasonable for a dev who makes an original game to want to protect themselves.
don't you think ?

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AAA games or even Inide devs couldn't give less shits about that. GPL, as far as I know,

How so ? a developer spends years making a game from scratch and they would not care if people were to use their source to make their own shit and sell it ? freely using their content ?

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doesn't even require you to provide other resources. So you can provide the code, but all the other resources could be removed from that.

How ???  Doesn't ENIGMA save the resources inside the 1 EGM file ? so if I am forced to include the EGM with my game, I am automatically including its resources too.

If I use external resources and only code in EGM, then distribute only the EGM, the person opening the EGM would get errors, BUT they would be able to see the custom decryption code and rip my game to pieces.

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If you download any Source engine game, for example, then in the folders there are plain resources for your taking. Same with Unreal, Cryengine and so on.

They already made their money and they get paid big bucks for game companies to license their engine.

Point being if I make a really good game and earning a couple of $ from it, I don't want some wrong doer to be using my shit and making a killing from it. I don't think that is fair.  But anyhow, to each their own.  Cayman islands here I come !  ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 21, 2014, 04:37:10 pm
You type a lot.
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I don't mean to offend anybody by saying this, but when you (meaning the team) decided to make this project open source, you probably knew the pros / cons and that eventually something like this would come.
If the project wasn't open source then it certainly wouldn't have grown and would of have failed years ago. The "team" isn't here from day 1. Only Josh is the one who started this and is still here. While I joined in 2008, my first contribution was in maybe 2011. Robert came here only about a year ago. All of that is possible only because this is free and open source project. If Josh made it "shareware", then he would actually need a company, paid people and so on to function. ENIGMA isn't a company. We don't sell anything and we don't plan to. I might leave the project tomorrow (and I don't need a formal resignation or anything to do so, I can just vanish) and someone else will come in my place sooner or later and that is true for everybody here. Everyone can go to git and make a pull request and that is how that person becomes a part of the dev team.

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simply become a shareware, with possibility of getting a paid version free of all those limits ?
That would mean this wouldn't be community project. It would mean the source would be closed and no new developers would join the project unless we specifically tried to get some (that would imply money, as in salary). And that would also require a company (as that would technically be a commercial enterprise with all things coming with it). So it would probably be an instant death to this project.

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I have never said this myself, but read people mention it here and elsewhere.
I, for example, couldn't care the slightest whether someone uses ENIGMA or not. I (and others) have said this millions (without exaggeration) of times - We don't want to make a commercial product or even a free product that rivals commercial ones. Our development is unguided, with barely any goals and done in spare time. The reason I develop things for ENIGMA is only because:
a) That teaches me A LOT of things. The reason I am kind of proficient in C++ right now is because I helped to make many things in ENIGMA. It was a great learning experience and still is. I only know OpenGL because of ENIGMA.
b) I use it. I used it in my bachelors thesis (made a touchscreen and games/apps were made in ENIGMA), my master thesis (I render 3D point clouds, even animated, in ENIGMA) and school+work stuff in general. I prototype and create stuff for myself in ENIGMA all the time. From petri net simulators to code obfuscator for my bank card.

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....yet the forums are inactive (same people posting) and I don't hear much about game titles released using ENIGMA.
Because we don't actually try to get users. Some have shown initiative, like posting in some forums or whatever. But we don't do that actively. I am actually interested to know how you found ENIGMA.

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whether ENIGMA will gain more grounds.
And I couldn't care less. I actually hope it wouldn't, as then I would have some kind of "responsibility" to fix or implement something. But whether ENIGMA gains ground or not is based on if we find any more active dev's and whether we actually try to publicize it.

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game is aware of cracks or where to look.
If the person know how to Google, I don't see how he wouldn't know that. I can tell from experience, stealing a game (and doing it safely without getting viruses or whatever) is extremely easy. In many cases easier than to getting it legally (and I don't mean a problem with money).

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That is the point I'm making.
But that point is actually contradictory. You are saying how a "regular user" doesn't need to see files while you don't care that others can. But ask yourself, who actually needs those files? Do a regular gamer need your sprite sheet or the .x model? Probably not. The ones who will want to rip your sprites are the ones who want to use them in their game. And that of course means that he is a programmer (or in other ways not a "regular user"). So people who want to rip your resources will always be able to, those who don't need to, won't. That is why I added that "child" thing. When I was 14 and I made games in GM I also was paranoid that others will get my resources. But when you grow up and see that ripping is easy in any case, then you just stop caring about that. Especially if you make a game that you sell. If others get resources from your game, then you have all the rights for copyright infringement. They won't be able to get money from that either way. As I said, even Indie devs don't bother with that anymore. For example, you can rip from Spelunky as easy as from Hotline Miami. I am not saying you shouldn't at least pack them together in one file and do some easy "encryption". Just saying that resource ripping is not considered a big problem.

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They already made their money and they get paid big bucks for game companies to license their engine.
I was reffering to the engines and not the developers of the engines. My point was that every game of the same engine has the resources in the same place and in the same format. So it doesn't matter if you take The Stanley Parable, Dota2 or Postal III. All of them have resources in the same place, same formats and which can be ripped in minutes. And all are from different developers, Stanley Parable is Indie for example, so he didn't have much money before releasing the game.

edit:
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I don't want some wrong doer to be using my shit and making a killing from it.
And this is exactly the point why we can't easily choose a license. A person will always be able to rip resources from your game and use them. If you sell a game, he might create a clone and sell too. You would have to be a legal entity to sell a game (or have a publisher) and so you would be protected by copyright laws. ENIGMA on the other hand wouldn't be. All we are protected by is the license. And that is why we need to choose the right one. So we are having the same problem with ENIGMA, as you are having with your game. But as we are not actually selling ENIGMA, then the problem can be greater, as others could make money directly from our work and we wouldn't have any legal standing to stop that. You would.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 21, 2014, 05:05:33 pm
So far I know people who have sold their games made in GMS and made several hundreds of $ and have not been sued by anyone yet.

Why would they be sued? YoYo Games gives you a license that allows you to do that with the games you make with GMS. Of course, the license is only granted to you if you sign a contract that puts unjust restrictions on your use of GMS, on top of the already-existing unjust restrictions of copyright. You have to agree not to reverse-engineer GMS, for example.

Perhaps it would have been a better idea not to make it open source but a shareware with limited functionality with a path to upgrade to a PRO version that allows selling, and doing whatever ...  Like I said, I would have gladly paid for something like ENIGMA.

I haven't interacted with this community very much, so I don't know how most people feel about freedom. But let me tell you this: ENIGMA is nowhere near as good in a practical sense as GMS. It's not even unique for being compiled rather than interpreted anymore; GMS added a compiler. But it has two major things going for it: it's free/libre, and it's gratis. If ENIGMA wasn't free/libre, I would think it to be no better than the many other proprietary game engines out there such as Game Maker, and I would refuse to use it on the same grounds that I refuse to use Game Maker.

But ENIGMA is free/libre and shows no sign of changing this, so I recommend it to people as a potential replacement for Game Maker.

Even if ENIGMA was able to be developed into something as good as Game Maker by being just another proprietary program, it wouldn't matter. It would just be yet another proprietary program, and in the end it would be no better than Game Maker. And of course, it would not have the inherent immortality that free/libre software has.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 27, 2014, 05:19:17 am
Hundreds of views, but only eight votes? Even if you don't want to join in the discussion, please voice your opinion by voting!
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: FroggestSpirit on March 29, 2014, 12:18:44 am
Can't we have different licensing for ENIGMA itself, and the games made from it? I'm not too knowledgeable on licenses, but I think it'd be fair if one makes a game with ENIGMA, they can:
-sell it
-not have to make it open source
-not have to pay fees
-have the option to say if it was made in ENIGMA or not

As for ENIGMA itself, I think it'd be fair to:
-modify it
-choose whether to distribute modifications of it or not
-not be able to sell it or profit off of it (unless it's a game or software compiled from it)

Does that sound reasonable? and what licenses would those be?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 29, 2014, 12:24:03 am
That's exactly what we're trying to accomplish, Frogg. I was trying to do it with a custom license, because there is no existing open-source license that separates the product and creations made with it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 29, 2014, 09:36:05 am
-not be able to sell it or profit off of it (unless it's a game or software compiled from it)

Absolutely not. A non-commercial-only restriction would be completely unacceptable. I'm sure Josh agrees, or at least understands that this restriction would make ENIGMA a proprietary program.

A lot of artists have a hard-on for non-commercial licenses because they think this puts a leash on big corporations. This is incredibly naive. The leash is on the small man who wants to make a living with his work. Big corporations are used to having to pay for a special license, or just doing the work themselves (because, you know, they have money). It's the people who don't have boatloads of money who are trapped by these licenses.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 29, 2014, 10:36:30 am
..except the GCC linking exception, Josh.

That was exactly what FroggestSpirit was saying, onpon.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: FroggestSpirit on March 29, 2014, 10:58:44 am
What I'm trying to say, is that I cannot take Enima, add one line of code, call it "Game Engine Maker" and sell it.
I think ENIGMA itself should be open source, and free. That would help influence a community to thrive and develop it rather than people taking it, and selling it, (which would probably branch it off into even more projects rather than this one big one).

I still believe that any avarage joe should be able to use ENIGMA, make a game (or software from it), Hit compile, and redistribute that exe to whomever, with ehatever price tag, and NOT have to give a single line of the game's code, say it was made with ENIGMA, or pay any money to ENIGMA.

What if YYG turned around, took ENIGMA, changed a few things, and bam... Game Maker Studio 2? That'd be heartbreaking.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 11:57:02 am
Please keep in mind that this vote/discussion is not about putting all of ENIGMA's code under a new license. We're talking about relicensing only the engine portion of the code.

As I understand it, the parser/compiler portion of ENIGMA has very little worth without the engine portion. The opposite should be true as well. The parser/compiler needs the engine to create a working executable. The engine needs the parser/compiler to translate a game developer's code and combine it with the engine code to create a working executable. If this is incorrect, please explain.

1. Isn't it enough to keep the parser/compiler protected with the GPL and change the engine to the MPL?

2. Is either portion of ENIGMA very useful without the other?

3. If someone wanted to make the next GameMaker with ENIGMA, wouldn't they have to modify code or create extensions in both the parser/compiler and the engine?

These are not rhetorical questions and I would appreciate a well-thought out response.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 29, 2014, 12:49:17 pm

I still believe that any avarage joe should be able to use ENIGMA, make a game (or software from it), Hit compile, and redistribute that exe to whomever, with ehatever price tag, and NOT have to give a single line of the game's code, say it was made with ENIGMA, or pay any money to ENIGMA.

I agree about the being able to distribute and sell it the way you want it and not having to give your source, however  I completely disagree with also not having to mention the ENIGMA engine.   Remember that with GM your license has to mention YoYoGames because they hold the rights to the runner and engine.
The least one could do is mention ENIGMA, even if your game is compiled, it is still dependent on ENIGMA's engine which makes your game work.

I have no problem mentioning it.  I rather mention ENIGMA engine than "YOYO" anytime.


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What if YYG turned around, took ENIGMA, changed a few things, and bam... Game Maker Studio 2? That'd be heartbreaking.

Heartbreaking,but not in the right way  ;D ;D ;D

They already take open source stuff, break it, restrict it and charge big money !  With their completely fucked up mentality of breaking something then trailing on months on, then removing functions, I think your proposition would be very unlikely.  If they did that they'd "break" ENIGMA..... :P

Don't give them any ideas !
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on March 29, 2014, 01:19:34 pm
Quote from: Darkstar
The least one could do is mention ENIGMA, even if your game is compiled, it is still dependent on ENIGMA's engine which makes your game work.
I don't want to make people have to do that, I am sure there are plenty of people who would proudly display that anyway. But I don't feel comfortable pushing that on people. And also, less restrictive licensing is one of the features of our project versus theirs.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 29, 2014, 02:42:19 pm
That was exactly what FroggestSpirit was saying, onpon.

FroggestSpirit was listing that as an acceptable restriction for ENIGMA, saying that it only becomes unacceptable if it applied to games. I said it's not an acceptable restriction.

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What I'm trying to say, is that I cannot take Enima, add one line of code, call it "Game Engine Maker" and sell it.

This is a silly fear. As long as people are getting their deserved copy of ENIGMA's source code under the appropriate license, it shouldn't matter if someone is making money from it; and similarly, if ENIGMA can take back these little changes, these people aren't going to have an unfair advantage over ENIGMA. This is not a danger.

Also, keep in mind that both the Free Software Definition and the Open Source Definition pointedly include the right to commercial use, like selling copies. A "non-commercial-only" restriction would not be free/libre or open source.

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however  I completely disagree with also not having to mention the ENIGMA engine

Well, relevant copyright headers and license information obviously should stay intact, but games shouldn't be required to display a special pop-up or anything like that. That could easily turn into something like the "obnoxious advertising clause" of the original (4-clause) BSD license.

I think it's better to encourage showing off that something is made with ENIGMA (by making it the default behavior or very easy to add), not enforce it with a license.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 29, 2014, 03:08:04 pm
Quote from: Darkstar
The least one could do is mention ENIGMA, even if your game is compiled, it is still dependent on ENIGMA's engine which makes your game work.
I don't want to make people have to do that, I am sure there are plenty of people who would proudly display that anyway. But I don't feel comfortable pushing that on people. And also, less restrictive licensing is one of the features of our project versus theirs.

I'm sure it's the least people would do.  Commercial games always credit their engines, even if they didn't have to.....  You could hard code in the engine so that it displays automatically "This game was made with ENIGMA" with a 60 seconds delay.  (evil grin) :P

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on March 29, 2014, 03:12:32 pm
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2) As you already said, suing is time and money consuming. So it's virtually impossible that anyone from ENIGMA dev team would be active enough to do so. Only maybe Robert during one of his sissy fits could summon the time (but not money)
If I sue anybody; it'll be Josh, just for shits and giggles.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 29, 2014, 04:07:05 pm
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2) As you already said, suing is time and money consuming. So it's virtually impossible that anyone from ENIGMA dev team would be active enough to do so. Only maybe Robert during one of his sissy fits could summon the time (but not money)
If I sue anybody; it'll be Josh, just for shits and giggles.

Once again forgive my ignorance on this matter but this reminds me of a question might seem crazy, but I'll ask anyway.

What if ENIGMA goes to shit and it is dropped completely, scrapped, removed from the face of the earth, no longer available for download, is there such a thing as de-licensing or prohibiting users from using ENIGMA?  If ENIGMA is gone / scrapped, will people still be allowed to use it to make and sell games ?
Let's say ENIGMA is gone, website, any link to it,
what are people going to link back to ? 

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If I sue anybody; it'll be Josh, just for shits and

You are only human Robert, unless proven otherwise :D  Let's say hypothetically that someone makes $10 million from an ENIGMA game, game is a best seller goes viral and the developer is wiping his ass with all the money he is making !   This could lead anybody to sue...... License or no license, regardless!

Now I don't know what  country you are from, but in America people sue for anything.  If I were an American I could sue you for a spelling error you made in an ENIGMA update and I could win ! :D

People should NEVER take "Oh I will never sue" as written in stone or ASSUME they won't get sued.

Also licenses can be rendered useless unless they are LEGAL binding.  One of the devs could plead insanity when they made the license or that they were drunk :D

Given the costs of such endeavors, let's assume the safest, that  the license issue will always be up in the air........
and by that it's best to be cautious and assume you CAN get sued, regardless of what you use or do.

Sometimes it doesn't take much for something to go viral......  Even a stick figure game or game with blocky sprite or shit game and be potential success.

So everybody who uses ENIGMA and takes the plunge, assume that you can get sued anytime,
very unlikely if you don't make much money, but still a chance, and very likely if you do make it to fame and fortune.

So for example, if my game makes $10 millions, which I'm aiming for (1st month at least :D) Robert will sue me, but he'll probably go home with $1000 (that is if he's lucky.....) and his lawyers with the millions of $.

Who really wins in legal battles, most of the time it's the lawyers!   That's why class action suits are so fucking useless ! :D 

But no worries, i'll just plead insanity and claim
the devil made me do it!   ;D

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 29, 2014, 04:18:14 pm
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Absolutely not. A non-commercial-only restriction would be completely unacceptable. I'm sure Josh agrees, or at least understands that this restriction would make ENIGMA a proprietary program.
I still don't understand the issue with what the FroggestSpirit said. He said ENIGMA engine (that is the one running the game itself, so the game is ENIGMA engine + Your game) shouldn't be sellable on it's own. So you can't just take the ENGINE from Git (the engine is basically everything under ENIGMAsystem/SHELL) and sell that. On the other hand if you make some kind of software and then compile, then you should be able to sell it.

Basically when you make something ENIGMA you get "ENIGMA engine + Your game".
ENIGMA engine - Shouldn't be sellable.
ENIGMA engine + Your game - Should be.

I think it makes sense. And that is basically what the whole issue is about.

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1. Isn't it enough to keep the parser/compiler protected with the GPL and change the engine to the MPL?
It could lessen any problems and make the whole thing harder to use (as the parser/compiler would have to be written from scratch). Just FIY - we say "compiler" even though we don't actually compile anything ourselves. It's actually just the parser that creates the C++ code and then GCC is used to compile it.
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2. Is either portion of ENIGMA very useful without the other?
Could be. I guess depends on the one who tries to steal it. Technically you should be able to compile everything without the parser. I could actually try that some time as it's both a good feature (as it means you could code everything in pure C++ without LGM or anything else) and a bad one (as the enigne under a permissive license would make it sellable on its own).
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3. If someone wanted to make the next GameMaker with ENIGMA, wouldn't they have to modify code or create extensions in both the parser/compiler and the engine?
Technically they could get rid of the parser part and only use the engine. They wouldn't be able to use GML/EDL it this case, but they could code in pure C++. You can check that yourself. Everything you code gets parsed and then written to "C:\ProgramData\ENIGMA\Preprocessor_Environment_Editable". These are the files that need to be replicated when not using the parser. If you only wanted to use the ENIGMA engine then most of the files here could probably be empty as well.

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If I were an American I could sue you for a spelling error you made in an ENIGMA update and I could win ! :D
That really is not how suing works. It can take many years (especially when talking about millions of dollars), many trials (it's not like "Trial is done, Robert won, give Robert money", it's more like "Trial is done, Robert won, If Darkstar doesn't agree with verdict, we can start again") and most people just say "f it" and stops. So you can think whatever you want of ENIGMA or the possibility of Robert suing you, but trials are not something you just take out of your ass. That is why most things actually AREN'T settled in court (even large companies involving many millions of $ settle out of court as it's a lot easier).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on March 29, 2014, 05:07:24 pm
People please, leaving all rethoric aside, this is not the biggest problem now, it's just icing on the cake.

Of course, it could become a bigger problem if the situation changes, but nobody is going to lose their house in a lawsuit.

Clearly state the license you prefer, and if you are really concerned, try to reach an agreement.

If this topic drowns into the flames of political argument, any possible solution will go down with it.

Reach agreement. Solve problem. Situation better.
Everybody happy.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 05:09:20 pm
Thanks for replying TheExDeus.
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ENIGMA engine - Shouldn't be sellable.
ENIGMA engine + Your game - Should be.
To do this would require a custom license. I think that's a bad idea with the possibility of legal loopholes. Also, do we really want to restrict people to making just games with ENIGMA? The GameMaker community has made a lot of useful applications with GameMaker; not just games. Do we want to restrict the ENIGMA community to games only? Another problem is how do we define a game in legalese?

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It could lessen any problems and make the whole thing harder to use (as the parser/compiler would have to be written from scratch).
I agree. Anyone "stealing" ENIGMA would have to create a new parser and add features to the engine to make their proprietary creation profitable. This sounds like more work than most people/companies would be willing to put in. Cooperating with the ENIGMA community would be easier and more productive by comparison. You can't force cooperation, but you can encourage it!

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Technically you should be able to compile everything without the parser. I could actually try that some time as it's both a good feature (as it means you could code everything in pure C++ without LGM or anything else) and a bad one (as the enigne under a permissive license would make it sellable on its own).
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Technically they could get rid of the parser part and only use the engine. They wouldn't be able to use GML/EDL it this case, but they could code in pure C++.
While that's true, it would negate the point of using ENIGMA. If you have the skill to code a game in C++, there are plenty of engines better optimized for that purpose with more permissive licenses. There's very little benefit to using ENIGMA's engine this way (please tell me if I'm wrong). I don't see how selling the engine by itself would be profitable unless it was changed drastically and changes that dramatic would require sharing under the MPL.

Thanks for answering my questions. It seems I can't stay away from this discussion, but at least my responses are somewhat shorter. :)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on March 29, 2014, 05:18:02 pm
Thanks for replying TheExDeus.
Quote
ENIGMA engine - Shouldn't be sellable.
ENIGMA engine + Your game - Should be.
To do this would require a custom license. I think that's a bad idea with the possibility of legal loopholes. Also, do we really want to restrict people to making just games with ENIGMA? The GameMaker community has made a lot of useful applications with GameMaker; not just games. Do we want to restrict the ENIGMA community to games only? Another problem is how do we define a game in legalese?

I'll just comment on the license here.

GPL allows selling, always has and always will.

You can sell LibreOffice on ebay for as much as you want, and nobody can tell you not to try.
It's perfectly legal and allowed by the license.

Though, since the code is available, anybody can freely compile it by himself and redistribute the binary for free.

"Free as in liberty" easily translates to "free as in beer".

Same goes for MPL, Apache, MIT and all other Open Source licenses.
One of the requisites for being eligible to classify as Open Source is actually that you put no restrictions on selling.
"Free Redistribution" is point 1 of the Open Source Definition, look for yourself
http://opensource.org/osd-annotated
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 05:21:42 pm
I don't think the licensing is the biggest problem, but it is a big problem. I think the current license hurts the potential growth of this community. However, this issue has been talked to death here and in other threads.

 I keep hoping one of ENIGMA's developers will begin contacting the other contributors and persuade them to authorize a license change. Any volunteers?

I would, but I doubt it would mean anything coming from me. I've probably just been pissing people off with this constant license debate. Not my intention, but there it is.  :-\
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on March 29, 2014, 07:00:22 pm
Quote
To do this would require a custom license. I think that's a bad idea with the possibility of legal loopholes. Also, do we really want to restrict people to making just games with ENIGMA? The GameMaker community has made a lot of useful applications with GameMaker; not just games. Do we want to restrict the ENIGMA community to games only? Another problem is how do we define a game in legalese?
And that exactly is the problem. Josh thinks a custom license is the only way (and by the requirements we presented it would be), but as already stated, it's a loophole magnet. And of course I just use the terminology "game", while it was meant "ENIGMA + your software", but that again is hard to define. Josh tried that earlier and he had in style of "ENIGMA + parsed output of LGM", but then LGM is involved which is a different project from ENIGMA. So it all creates problems.

Quote
I agree. Anyone "stealing" ENIGMA would have to create a new parser and add features to the engine to make their proprietary creation profitable. This sounds like more work than most people/companies would be willing to put in. Cooperating with the ENIGMA community would be easier and more productive by comparison. You can't force cooperation, but you can encourage it!
The parser isn't as hard as you might think and companies would sure as hell have the resources to make one. And this means you could make a parser that not only takes EDL/GML, but anything you might want. You could make a parser that takes Python if you wanted to. Or JS (which was actually partly done by Josh for ENIMGAJS project).

Quote
While that's true, it would negate the point of using ENIGMA. If you have the skill to code a game in C++, there are plenty of engines better optimized for that purpose with more permissive licenses. There's very little benefit to using ENIGMA's engine this way (please tell me if I'm wrong). I don't see how selling the engine by itself would be profitable unless it was changed drastically and changes that dramatic would require sharing under the MPL.
Of course there are many game engines available, but so are game making tools. ENIGMA's engine on it's own isn't a bad one and if could be used without LGM then it would hold merit on its own. At least for 2D games it's very optimized and even advanced. So I think if was very easy, then ENIGMA's engine might be used on its own like any other. But right now that might include more work.

Quote
I keep hoping one of ENIGMA's developers will begin contacting the other contributors and persuade them to authorize a license change. Any volunteers?
Most ENIGMA devs who are required for license change are in these forums (Josh mentioned this a few posts ago), so it's not that we can't get together. It's that we haven't still chosen a license. MPL is the closest we came to choosing one, but it isn't perfect either. So if nothing better comes out of this, then it might be the one we choose. Then it's up to Josh whether we really use MPL or he thinks of a custom one (and whether its worth it).
I think most dev's are ready to choose MPL as the lesser evil.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on March 29, 2014, 07:01:44 pm
I'll just sum up my position, if Josh is happy, I'm happy.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 07:21:57 pm
From what Josh has said earlier, I doubt he would be happy with the MPL, but he might go along with the MPL if everyone else decides to use it. Just a guess based on previous discussion.

What we need is a statement of license choice from each ENIGMA contributor. Then at least a more useful discussion could take place. The decision is up to all of the copyright holders, but we haven't heard from everyone of them yet.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 29, 2014, 07:29:06 pm
Why not say "ENIGMA + parsed output of compiler" like the GCC linking exception, which is probably the most widely used license that happens to do exactly what Josh wants here?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 07:56:29 pm
Why not say "ENIGMA + parsed output of compiler" like the GCC linking exception, which is probably the most widely used license that happens to do exactly what Josh wants here?
Because the GPL, in all it's forms, prevents people from selling their games in the Mac and iTunes App Store. The MPL has no such issue. For example, check out why VLC was pulled from the App Store (http://www.macnn.com/articles/11/01/07/move.said.to.be.related.to.licensing.dispute/) and then came back when relicensed under the MPL. (http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/07/vlc-media-player-returns-to-the-ios-app-store-after-30-month-hiatus/)

Using any form of GPL code, distributed with games, is a risk to game developers. I, like many others, want to make games for Mac and IOS. I don't agree with Apple's policy, but that's not the issue. The App Store is the best way to sell software on Mac and the only way to sell software on IOS. (I know ENIGMA doesn't run on IOS, but I'm hoping it will someday.)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: FroggestSpirit on March 29, 2014, 08:36:46 pm
1) anything the comes out of the compile button should be free to do anything with, Most people say games, but i also say software, because I've used ENIGMA to throw together quick file converters

2)I have no issue showing that I made the game with the ENIGMA engine, but I just feel it shouldn't be forced.

3)Who's to say someone wont compile ENIGMA from the source code inside of ENIGMA? (though this probably isnt something to worry about.

Also... when is the final decision being made?

I strongly suggest having separate licenses for ENIGMA, and any software/game compiled using it
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 29, 2014, 08:37:10 pm
Everything on the app store uses those libraries. VLC was a problem because the application itself was GPL.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 29, 2014, 09:23:43 pm
Frankly, no project should force itself to change licenses to work with Apple's censorship policy enforced by digital restriction mechanisms. Of course, as Rusky pointed out, this has absolutely nothing to do with a library which has had its copyleft weakened so proprietary programs can use it. That shouldn't be a problem with Apple's app store.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on March 29, 2014, 10:31:22 pm
I'm sorry, but I do have to agree with these guys in that I don't agree with Apple's bullshit. Also, I pretty much hate everything about them. Steve Jobs was an abusive dick who abandoned his daughter, he wasn't very smart, and he wasn't a very kind person at all.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 10:36:04 pm
Rusky: Part of every game made with ENIGMA would be GPL with the GCC Linking Exception. An ENIGMA game sold on the App Store would be incompatible because of the GPL licensed engine code compiled with every game. All it takes is one person notifying Apple and the game gets taken down. Portions of the GPL are simply incompatible with Apple's Store policy. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Legal_Barrier_to_App_Stores) The GCC Linking Exception doesn't change that. Maybe I just don't understand what you're arguing (that's definitely possible). Maybe the example I pointed to is a bad example, but that's not the point.

The many forms of the GPL and DRM don't mix. Having the engine code under any version of the GPL could prevent sales of people's games on stores that use DRM.

onpon: I'm not saying I agree with DRM or Apple's policies (I don't), but the license change is a usability issue, not a political one. My goal is to make games and sell them. If my goal was to make political statements, I'd be an activist and not a game developer. Sometimes it's possible to do both, but first and foremost: a man's gotta eat.

ENIGMA's developers should ask themselves: Am I creating a useful game engine or a personal crusade? Very hard to do both...
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on March 29, 2014, 10:39:44 pm
That's not exactly what I meant. It's the way you are arguing.

Apple has a highly restrictive Store Policy, therefore we should change our whole license around to accommodate it.

Which is really just absurd. The better way to argue it is the following.

ENIGMA has a restrictive license, let's try to find ways to give users more rights.

Is the better way to make the argument.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 29, 2014, 10:47:05 pm
onpon: I'm not saying I agree with DRM or Apple's policies (I don't), but the license change is a usability issue, not a political one. My goal is to make games and sell them. If my goal was to make political statements, I'd be an activist and not a game developer. Sometimes it's possible to do both, but first and foremost: a man's gotta eat.

Then let me repeat this: GPL plus exceptions to allow proprietary programs to use ENIGMA should pose no problems for your desire to publish proprietary games on Apple's app store.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 29, 2014, 10:51:11 pm
onpon: Please provide links that prove what you're saying, because everything I've read says the opposite. Better yet, how about a link to an app on the App Store that uses the GCC Linking Exception.

I've argued this in so many ways on multiple threads (that apparently no one reads). I'm tired of arguing the same thing over and over again. How can I make people see that a less restrictive license is in this project's best interest?

If someone can't do whatever they want with the game they've created and sell it wherever they want, why would they use this engine over another engine with no restrictions?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 29, 2014, 10:59:58 pm
Quote
Absolutely not. A non-commercial-only restriction would be completely unacceptable. I'm sure Josh agrees, or at least understands that this restriction would make ENIGMA a proprietary program.
I still don't understand the issue with what the FroggestSpirit said. He said ENIGMA engine (that is the one running the game itself, so the game is ENIGMA engine + Your game) shouldn't be sellable on it's own. So you can't just take the ENGINE from Git (the engine is basically everything under ENIGMAsystem/SHELL) and sell that. On the other hand if you make some kind of software and then compile, then you should be able to sell it.

Basically when you make something ENIGMA you get "ENIGMA engine + Your game".
ENIGMA engine - Shouldn't be sellable.
ENIGMA engine + Your game - Should be.

I think it makes sense. And that is basically what the whole issue is about.

Quote
1. Isn't it enough to keep the parser/compiler protected with the GPL and change the engine to the MPL?
It could lessen any problems and make the whole thing harder to use (as the parser/compiler would have to be written from scratch). Just FIY - we say "compiler" even though we don't actually compile anything ourselves. It's actually just the parser that creates the C++ code and then GCC is used to compile it.
Quote
2. Is either portion of ENIGMA very useful without the other?
Could be. I guess depends on the one who tries to steal it. Technically you should be able to compile everything without the parser. I could actually try that some time as it's both a good feature (as it means you could code everything in pure C++ without LGM or anything else) and a bad one (as the enigne under a permissive license would make it sellable on its own).
Quote
3. If someone wanted to make the next GameMaker with ENIGMA, wouldn't they have to modify code or create extensions in both the parser/compiler and the engine?
Technically they could get rid of the parser part and only use the engine. They wouldn't be able to use GML/EDL it this case, but they could code in pure C++. You can check that yourself. Everything you code gets parsed and then written to "C:\ProgramData\ENIGMA\Preprocessor_Environment_Editable". These are the files that need to be replicated when not using the parser. If you only wanted to use the ENIGMA engine then most of the files here could probably be empty as well.

Quote
If I were an American I could sue you for a spelling error you made in an ENIGMA update and I could win ! :D
That really is not how suing works. It can take many years (especially when talking about millions of dollars), many trials (it's not like "Trial is done, Robert won, give Robert money", it's more like "Trial is done, Robert won, If Darkstar doesn't agree with verdict, we can start again") and most people just say "f it" and stops. So you can think whatever you want of ENIGMA or the possibility of Robert suing you, but trials are not something you just take out of your ass. That is why most things actually AREN'T settled in court (even large companies involving many millions of $ settle out of court as it's a lot easier).

Good, I'm happy you mention the last part, because that is a point I was making before, certain things get settled out of courts, it is sometimes the best interest of both parties, but sometimes certain thing don't and trail forever even if it means endless expenses, it's all about principles and who has a bigger dick at that point. 

I know trials are not that easy I was kidding sort of, but frivolous lawsuits happen and some people who initiate them win who don't deserve to, some companies will fold and give in to avoid the costly and lengthy battles, this is factual, and well documented, and more common than one can think. :)

In the case of ENIGMA, the initiator of the lawsuit would have a strong case and defendant little argument as a clear violation of license agreement was committed.  Here is where I am confused, if say, a developer gets sued by an enigma dev, does the developer receive right away a notice that they are getting sued or a warning that the game they are distributing is not abiding by licensing terms, sort of a S&D and a time delay to remove distribution of such games....... should the dev comply, will he be exempt from legal action ?   OR if say Robert finds out someone's game is a huge success and takes legal action to get some or all of the profits, how will he/she/it establish the amount of money that represents profits?

In other words, a person using enigma, would they still have a choice and be given time to comply and provide source or remove their game from distribution or is it set in stone that they get sued.

Yes I am aware that legal battles are a lengthy and expensive process, so one would assume by logic that it would not benefit Robert or Josh or any enigma developer to just sue someone for not including source code, unless the said compiled game has generated enough profits to warrant a case.   Right?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on March 29, 2014, 11:05:55 pm
If someone can't do whatever they want with the game they've created and sell it wherever they want, why would they use this engine over another engine with no restrictions?

In an ideal world I would agree with you 100%, unfortunately, there are not that many good engines like ENIGMA out there, well there are but they have a steeper learning curve, require coding and might be more restrictive in other areas.  Why is ENIGMA good ? for people who used game maker - You don't feel lost when using LGM, the IDE is familiar and so are
 the actions, commands, etc.  + it allows GML, C++, etc.  And to be honest I have not seen any worthy GM clone, there are many but most are utter shit !  ENIGMA is by far the best I've seen and used out of the many out there that were crap.

Now the developers of ENIGMA also want protection for their work and project much the same way want things.  In my opinion, there will never be a license where both parties will have equal protection it will always lean towards one or the other.   Besides, if someone wanted to take ENIGMA and make it better and their own it would have happened by now, there are many cheap ass imitations out there that don't even deserve to be called GM clones :D

As far as "custom licenses" those would require legal support, I don't think that is an option they will consider, and doing a custom without this step would be IMO risky.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 29, 2014, 11:56:40 pm
If someone can't do whatever they want with the game they've created and sell it wherever they want, why would they use this engine over another engine with no restrictions?

If it's true that weakened GPL, allowing exceptions so that the app can be proprietary, prevents said proprietary apps from getting on the app store, that doesn't mean that the weak variant of the GPL is more restrictive.

And about that: I am not very familiar with iOS; but rather than asking for a program that uses a library under something like the GNU LGPL, how about you find one which has been censored for this reason? A proprietary program under the GNU LGPL or similar, or compiled with GCC? Both of us are able to provide evidence here; but such a program currently being up doesn't actually prove anything concretely (Apple might have just not noticed), and searching for such a program is a lot harder than searching for an example of such a program being censored; a lot of programs you might not even think about use weakly copylefted software.

I'm completely in favor of giving ENIGMA weak copyleft for this exact reason you mentioned: Game Maker is easily as good as and probably better than ENIGMA, so strong copyleft is just going to steer people toward Game Maker, not convince them to make their software free/libre. But whatever ridiculous policies Apple has in its censored distribution channel should absolutely not factor into this. ENIGMA doesn't need to cater to iOS developers or even work with iOS at all to be successful.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 30, 2014, 02:23:04 am
Apple themselves distribute the language standard libraries, which use the gcc linking exception, as part of their toolchain, so literally every app uses that license for that part of its code. Even if you change the ENIGMA engine license, it will still link with those same libraries.

VLC itself was GPL, which is an entirely different story from all the other apps that just link with the standard library under the exception.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 30, 2014, 03:18:15 am
Rusky: I'll just have to take your word for it since I can barely call myself a programmer.

What would be the benefit of using the GCC Linking Exception over the MPL? Can someone offer a comparison of the two licenses?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 30, 2014, 08:48:29 am
GCC linking exception means the library itself is GPL except that if you link with it using what the license calls an "Eligible Compilation Process" it doesn't apply to your code. "Eligible Compilation Process" is a more flexible definition equivalent to the proposed "generated with LGM" that doesn't restrict which compiler to use, etc.

MPL would allow the same things, but also allow a few further uses of the library without sharing, which Josh has covered previously.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 30, 2014, 01:35:47 pm
Since the GCC Linking Exception and the GPL 3.0 don't define a "Runtime Library," an outside definition is needed. Wikipedia's definition of a runtime library (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runtime_library) doesn't seem to apply to ENIGMA's engine code.
Quote
In computer programming, a runtime library is a set of low-level routines used by a compiler to invoke some of the behaviors of a runtime environment, by inserting calls to the runtime library into compiled executable binary.
During compilation, ENIGMA's engine code (C++) is being linked with game code (C++). I'm barely a programmer, but the definition of runtime library doesn't seem to fit.

From the GCC Linking Exception (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gcc-exception-3.1.html):
Quote
A file is an "Independent Module" if it either requires the Runtime Library for execution after a Compilation Process, or makes use of an interface provided by the Runtime Library, but is not otherwise based on the Runtime Library.
Is game code based on ENIGMA's engine code? It depends on your definition of "based on." The game code depends on the the engine code for it to run. That may meet the definition of "based on."

If any part of the GCC Linking Exception needs to be changed, we're heading into custom license territory again.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 30, 2014, 02:20:01 pm
If any part of the GCC Linking Exception needs to be changed, we're heading into custom license territory again.

Version 3 of the GNU GPL is specifically designed to allow special exceptions; version 3 of the LGPL is an example of this. This isn't a custom license, and it's not problematic the same way custom licenses are: any exceptions list added to the GNU GPL v3 can be ignored (using only the terms of the GNU GPL), so all such licenses are GPL-compatible.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 30, 2014, 02:39:33 pm
I realize the GCC Linking Exception isn't a custom license exception, but changing one or more words in it makes it a custom license exception. Such changes would be needed if the ENIGMA engine code doesn't qualify as a runtime library or if game code is "based on" engine code.

Quote
any exceptions list added to the GNU GPL v3 can be ignored (using only the terms of the GNU GPL)
This only further proves my point that using any form of the GPL is a bad idea for the engine code. The goal is to move away from some of the restrictions of the GPL, not back towards it if a license exception doesn't apply or can be ignored.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 30, 2014, 03:49:47 pm
This only further proves my point that using any form of the GPL is a bad idea for the engine code. The goal is to move away from some of the restrictions of the GPL, not back towards it if a license exception doesn't apply or can be ignored.

Er... how? All this fact means is that someone can make a strongly copylefted version of the program. Which they can do with a permissively licensed program, or a program licensed under the MPL. And with a permissive license, proprietary versions can be made. Being opposed to copyleft because it can be transformed into stronger copyleft is a bizarre and backwards concern.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on March 30, 2014, 04:17:55 pm
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on March 30, 2014, 05:11:40 pm
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 30, 2014, 06:35:34 pm
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on March 30, 2014, 11:01:20 pm
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on March 30, 2014, 11:50:00 pm
"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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on April 01, 2014, 10:13:29 pm
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on April 01, 2014, 10:59:39 pm
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?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 02, 2014, 09:36:22 am
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on April 04, 2014, 11:43:00 am
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 24, 2014, 12:52:18 am
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/ (http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/licence/)

Lazarus/FreePascal has such an exception too: http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/licensing (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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on April 26, 2014, 07:31:41 am
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.
Quote
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
Quote
              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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 10:27:05 am
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.
Quote
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
Quote
              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. :-(
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 26, 2014, 11:23:53 am
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 12:40:46 pm
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:

Quote
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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Lesser_General_Public_License)

http://wxwidgets.org/about/licence/ (http://wxwidgets.org/about/licence/)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 01:35:12 pm
A first atempt at the Enigma Engine License:

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 26, 2014, 01:40:23 pm
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.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on April 26, 2014, 03:48:41 pm
I will have to read over the wx license, but I suspect it suffers the same problem. The problem is that if you can release an arbitrary binary linked against ours, without source code, you can lock us out and sell an improved ENIGMA binary. While this does not encumber the use of our software directly, it gives this party direct and perpetual competitive advantage, leaving this team with little incentive to continue development, and locking everyone in on a proprietary version of ENIGMA due to addiction to the improvements.

This isn't a problem for wx due to its active developer base. Outdoing the wx devs with their own source code is a lot harder than outdoing us with ours.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 04:24:04 pm
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.

Compared to the GNU exceptions, the LGPL formulates more requirements to the linking exception: you must allow modification of the portions of the library you use and reverse engineering (of your program and the library) for debugging such modifications. But this is covered by the exception.

You make the exception and then submit it to the FSF for aproval, the license remains the same with an exception atached to it.

Since such exceptions have been aproved (not once or two times only), it stands to reason that an exception along the same lines should be aproved.

The GNU Classpath also has a linking exception allowing the development of privative software with statically linked libraries. There are many such exceptions, so we can use one or more as a template and modify it to our needs.

My draft is just that, a proposal for said exception, in order to stop arguin about it and start doing something; I used the wxWidgets as a template since they already did the legal legwork and enigma can therefore save the time, energy and money. If the developers agree in the draft's general idea I can happily make the modifications they deem necesary in order to have it ready so the developers team can submit it to the FSF for aproval.

I only wish to contribute something to enigma and, since I can't give money and my programming abilities are close to none...

Also every user would benefit by the legal certainty the exception provides, and it would deter the future/posible theft of the project's work in favor of a privative software.

Only one more point : The LGPL means Lesser GNU Public License, not Library license, therefore it can be used by any application. It has been used mostly for libraries because the GPL wasn't up to the task back then. The new version is a little different, yet didn't I read that the MAC people don't allow software using the GPL with exception into their stores? This could be why others use the LGPL and maybe enigma should too.

Although as I understand it the problem is for libraries/software that will be used to develop other software not for games, yet how would you develop games for their platform if they demand it be done in their platform or you can't access their stores?, you could of course not sell osx/ios versions or sell them through other parties, don't know if the users could buy/install them. That company is crazy!, I would never buy one of their machines, even if I had the money!
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 04:29:19 pm
I will have to read over the wx license, but I suspect it suffers the same problem. The problem is that if you can release an arbitrary binary linked against ours, without source code, you can lock us out and sell an improved ENIGMA binary. While this does not encumber the use of our software directly, it gives this party direct and perpetual competitive advantage, leaving this team with little incentive to continue development, and locking everyone in on a proprietary version of ENIGMA due to addiction to the improvements.

This isn't a problem for wx due to its active developer base. Outdoing the wx devs with their own source code is a lot harder than outdoing us with ours.

Quite true, that is why I modified the second clause and added a fifth clause to their exception:

Code: [Select]
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
 Engine. [color=red]As long as said works are not a similar/competing software, in that case refer to clause 5 (five) of this license.[/color]


5. You may use this software to develop a similar/competing software without written permission of the developers or their legal representatives.
 Provided that said software and any and all modifications included in it are made public and are covered by this same license without any
 modification except adding your name to the developers list.

With this I think enigma is covered against any such attempt to ripoff the code modify/improve it and then sell it as a different product.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on April 26, 2014, 05:11:31 pm
That puts us back in legal muddy-water, because now our license isn't Open-Source approved, and may or may not actually hold water, legally. What constitutes similar/competing software, for example? It's possible we could pull from an existing legal definition of "competing," but only a lawyer would know that.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 06:03:11 pm
That puts us back in legal muddy-water, because now our license isn't Open-Source approved, and may or may not actually hold water, legally. What constitutes similar/competing software, for example? It's possible we could pull from an existing legal definition of "competing," but only a lawyer would know that.

Isn't Open-Source approved? or FreeSoftware approved? They are not necessarily the same thing you know. :-)

Why do you say it isn't? As far as I can tell it only forbides you from taking enigma and use it in a closed source clone, not in a freesoftware/opensourced one.
 
You don't like similar/competing software? Fine lets change it for: any game making software

Or even better: any developement software.

or : Game Development software.

Also I bet it holds water but finally it's only a draft and therefore open to modification. The only way to know if it passes the FSF scrutiny is to submit it (Not that I think it's ready), and at the same time you would know if it holds water legally, since the FSF would not approve an exception that:

1.- Is not Free enough (This exception allows you to use enigma to develop games under whatever license you choose, therefore is more Free than the GPL even) :-)

2.- Is not legally sound.

My point is this: It's not cast in stone so lets think and modify it, you wont find a license that does exactly what you want, so lets take one close enough and add an exception to it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on April 26, 2014, 06:44:04 pm
I'm talking about this:
(http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/licence/OSI-Approved-License-100x137.png)

And I am not aware of a place to submit a license for review. If there is a process for that, I'm interested in seeing it. It's likely that your proposal is a great place to start (at least better than the typical LGPL exemption). But I still need to read that over.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 07:44:28 pm
I'm talking about this:
(http://www.wxwidgets.org/about/licence/OSI-Approved-License-100x137.png)

And I am not aware of a place to submit a license for review. If there is a process for that, I'm interested in seeing it. It's likely that your proposal is a great place to start (at least better than the typical LGPL exemption). But I still need to read that over.

There is an approval process for the Open-Source Fundation here:

http://opensource.org/approval (http://opensource.org/approval)

The Free Software Foundation is not that clear but you can start here:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/ (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/)

Then you get in touch with them:

 licensing@gnu.org (http://licensing@gnu.org)

And send them the text of your exception.

After about a month you will hear from them, if not then write them again.  :D
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 26, 2014, 07:46:01 pm
For an additional permission on top of the GNU GPL with v3's mechanism to do this, you don't need to worry about approval by the FSF or OSI, because the GPL on its own can be used if someone wants to, and this license has been accepted by both the FSF and the OSI.

The only way you would need to worry about this is if you are actually modifying a license. Which is why the GPLv3+ plus additional permissions is a better choice.

By the way, "LGPL" did originally stand for "Library General Public License", and version 2.1 of the LGPL uses the word "library" rather than "program". The reason it was changed to "Lesser General Public License" is because the FSF didn't want people assuming that the LGPL should be used for all libraries; sometimes the GPL is strategically a better choice.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 07:53:34 pm
For an additional permission on top of the GNU GPL with v3's mechanism to do this, you don't need to worry about approval by the FSF or OSI, because the GPL on its own can be used if someone wants to, and this license has been accepted by both the FSF and the OSI.

The only way you would need to worry about this is if you are actually modifying a license. Which is why the GPLv3+ plus additional permissions is a better choice.

By the way, "LGPL" did originally stand for "Library General Public License", and version 2.1 of the LGPL uses the word "library" rather than "program". The reason it was changed to "Lesser General Public License" is because the FSF didn't want people assuming that the LGPL should be used for all libraries; sometimes the GPL is strategically a better choice.

Well you may not need the permission of the OSI or the FSF but it would be great to have the exception checked by them, especially if it doesn't cost a dime!  :D I believe it's free as in free beer!  ;)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 26, 2014, 08:08:12 pm
Additional permissions can't make the GNU GPL less free. They can only weaken the copyleft.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 26, 2014, 09:27:37 pm
Atached below three versions of the exception:  ;)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on April 28, 2014, 06:07:02 am
Atached below three versions of the exception:  ;)
Consider how a single word in the fairly simple wxWidgets exception to the LGPL could make things unclear
Quote
The wxWindows Library Licence has been approved by the Open Source Initiative.

In August 2005, an ambiguity in Clause 2 was removed (replaced "the user's" with "your") and the version bumped to 3.1.

Writing an exception to the GPL is no small task.
Quote
2. As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give permission for additional uses of the text contained in this release of the software as licensed under the Enigma Engine License
Text? Do you mean the code? The GPL itself consumes whole paragraphs describing what source code is, and how bytecode is not considered source.
Just using the wrong word can lead to troubles.
This is the riskiest way you could attempt to solve the problem, if you ask me.

BTW libGDX, a free/libre game development framework that supports more platforms than Enigma or Studio will ever do, just reached v1.0.
The project started in 2009, and doesn't have many more stable developers than this project has, even though it receives many pull requests on GitHub.
...and it uses Apache 2.0 as its license
http://www.badlogicgames.com/wordpress/?p=3412
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 28, 2014, 06:52:00 am
Atached below three versions of the exception:  ;)

And they're all illegal. You can't just ignore the license that this license is under, slap on false copyright holders, and call it a day.

If you want to use the wxWidgets license as a template, you have to get permission from the copyright holders of that license document. Otherwise, don't use it as a template.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 28, 2014, 07:06:46 am
Atached below three versions of the exception:  ;)
Consider how a single word in the fairly simple wxWidgets exception to the LGPL could make things unclear
Quote
The wxWindows Library Licence has been approved by the Open Source Initiative.

In August 2005, an ambiguity in Clause 2 was removed (replaced "the user's" with "your") and the version bumped to 3.1.

Writing an exception to the GPL is no small task.
Quote
2. As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give permission for additional uses of the text contained in this release of the software as licensed under the Enigma Engine License
Text? Do you mean the code? The GPL itself consumes whole paragraphs describing what source code is, and how bytecode is not considered source.
Just using the wrong word can lead to troubles.
This is the riskiest way you could attempt to solve the problem, if you ask me.

BTW libGDX, a free/libre game development framework that supports more platforms than Enigma or Studio will ever do, just reached v1.0.
The project started in 2009, and doesn't have many more stable developers than this project has, even though it receives many pull requests on GitHub.
...and it uses Apache 2.0 as its license
http://www.badlogicgames.com/wordpress/?p=3412

Is funny that you mention it, the wxWidgets license says exactly that (text), didn't noticed before, what do you propose it says?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 28, 2014, 07:25:37 am
Atached below three versions of the exception:  ;)

And they're all illegal. You can't just ignore the license that this license is under, slap on false copyright holders, and call it a day.

No they are not illegal, in fact it would be approved by both the OSI and the FSF, maybe with a couple of minor changes in order to eliminate some ambiguity but that's all, believe me when I say that I took the time to read more than a dozen exceptions to the GPL and the text in this one is a rippoff of two or three of them; taking care of making it seem as a coherent text.

The GPL and similar licenses do establish copyright, they give the user the 4 fundamental rights over the software, but the copyright stands, that is why anybody with a software under the GPL can sue anybody trying to close the source of their project. Well not anybody, you and me as simple users can not, we at best can go to the developers (copyright owners), and tell them about it; they do have the right to pursue legal action.

Furthermore you as a developer can ask the OSI and the FSF to take your software out of the license it is (As long as it yours and the license is theirs or aproved by them), and then proceed and close the source of future releases (construct clasic GPL - Construct2 privative, same developers).

Also the gpl itself is copyrighted by the FSF, and you can modify any free/libre license that you want but you would have to change the name too; that's why the FSF developed the GPLv3 with the mechanism for you to attach exceptions to it. So you dont have to develop a license that does what you want and/or use an even more permissive license that allows for a third party to take the code, change it or not, close it, rebrand it and then sell it without giving you the code of their changes/improvements.

As for the copyright holders, if not the developers team then who?, the wxwidgets exception has been approved both by the OSI and the FSF, and it says exactly that (the names are different of course); whose name do you sugest should be there?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on April 28, 2014, 10:12:16 am
Quote
the gpl itself is copyrighted by the FSF

Correct. Also, the wxWidgets license is copyrighted by the people who wrote it.

Quote
you can modify any free/libre license that you want but you would have to change the name too; that's why the FSF developed the GPLv3 with the mechanism for you to attach exceptions to it.

Incorrect. You can't modify the GNU GPL because, as you can plainly see, the only license given to you to redistribute the GNU GPL says, "changing it is not allowed". The wxWidgets license has this exact same requirement in the only license given to redistribute it. To distribute modified versions, you have to get permission, as was done with the original Affero GPL.

Quote
As for the copyright holders, if not the developers team then who?

The people who actually wrote the license. So, the names that you erased. But this is a moot point, because you haven't obtained permission to modify the license in the first place.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 28, 2014, 12:02:17 pm
Quote
the gpl itself is copyrighted by the FSF

Correct. Also, the wxWidgets license is copyrighted by the people who wrote it.

Yes you are correct in both accounts.

Quote
you can modify any free/libre license that you want but you would have to change the name too; that's why the FSF developed the GPLv3 with the mechanism for you to attach exceptions to it.

Quote
Incorrect. You can't modify the GNU GPL because, as you can plainly see, the only license given to you to redistribute the GNU GPL says, "changing it is not allowed". The wxWidgets license has this exact same requirement in the only license given to redistribute it. To distribute modified versions, you have to get permission, as was done with the original Affero GPL.

Read in the GPL site they say that you can modify and release a license based on the GPL or LGPL but advise you not to, instead you should use an exception clause, which is what I propose, an exception attached to the GPL or LGPL deppending on which one the developers choose.

Also since the exception clause hasn't been adopted yet as official by the developers team we should be discussing the terminology, and contents of the exception. Does it need clarification in someplace? Does it need another point and which one? Should all the points propossed by me be on it?

Then I will gladly rewrite it to preserve the spirit of what has been agreed upon, so please propose modifications, points to add or to remove and then, when the final draft is complete I will rewrite it in such way that preserves that and at the same time is unique. (I hope you know that unless someone takes the time to read each and everyone of the exceptions is extremelly difficult to garantie it will not resemble something already out there)

Quote
As for the copyright holders, if not the developers team then who?

Quote
The people who actually wrote the license. So, the names that you erased. But this is a moot point, because you haven't obtained permission to modify the license in the first place.

The copyright holders are the people developing it, you are correct, the people developing the license and the people developing the software, I can easily write from scratch an exception clause, but the developers need to agree in the general terms, also I have no need or wish to see my name as copyright holder, as I said: is the only thing I can contribute to the project at this moment.

Finally, and please don't take this wrong, why don't you write an exception from scratch, without taking inspiration from anywhere else and propose that?

I am willing to analize any such proposal and to help in the wording, writing, investigation, etcetera.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on April 28, 2014, 01:49:44 pm
Quote
Finally, and please don't take this wrong, why don't you write an exception from scratch, without taking inspiration from anywhere else and propose that?
It's been attempted and nobody could agree on it any more than now.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on April 28, 2014, 02:11:01 pm
Quote
Finally, and please don't take this wrong, why don't you write an exception from scratch, without taking inspiration from anywhere else and propose that?
It's been attempted and nobody could agree on it any more than now.

Nobody? I would have thought the developers had the final say in this, after all is their work, kindly donated, that's in risk of being made closed source, and the comunity would most certainly lose a great piece of game making software!

Adopting the GPL with an exception is an urgent matter to prevent this, precisely this understanding was what motivated me to propose the general points of the exception.

Well, I have the source in my PC, and have begun to port the ide to FPC+LCL (Lazarus) this way it's multi-platform without deppending of the Huge Qt libraries.   :) Only wish I knew enough programming to port everything else! I would even rewrite the parser to parse to FPC and then you have a compiler for ios and android.  :) Of course that leaves the other libraries to investigate if they have pascal bindings (Not likely).  :(
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: FroggestSpirit on April 29, 2014, 01:58:43 pm
I just want to note this, I talked to some of the people on #opengl, and this is a summary

[14:53] <Frogg> would anyone be willing to help fix the OGL3 system?
[14:53] <Amadiro> Frogg, as I said, fix your license before accepting contributions
[14:53] <Amadiro> fix in the sense of "settling on one", whichever you decide that to be
[14:54] <Frogg> alright, i'll run that by them
[14:54] <Amadiro> nobody's gonna want to contribute if their code is going to get thrown out afterwards anyway because of a licensing change

I think we should get the licensing figured out for sure sooner than later. This will probably help attract more developers, and more work can be done if we all feel the code and project is secure.

JoshDreamland, I still feel like an exception, or a license that is separate for software compiled under ENIGMA would be a good choice, but it was also said, that everyone that contributed code, will have to agree on the final decision.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on May 03, 2014, 04:44:48 pm
This is my final post in this thread, you may take the text as a proposal or not, you may want to modify it or not, you may want to use the spirit of it or not; I won't do another thing unless the developers team asks me to.

That said here's a last draft for the exception notice:

Code: [Select]
Enigma Engine License, Version 1.4
======================================

Copyright (c) 2014 Josh Ventura, Robert B. Colton et al

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

ENIGMA ENGINE LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

This software is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even
the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 
See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this software.  If not, write
to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

EXCEPTION NOTICE

1. Linking the Enigma Engine statically or dynamically with other programs, modules and/or libraries is
making a combined work based on the Enigma Engine. Thus, the terms and conditions of the GNU General
Public License cover the whole combination.

2. As a special exception, the copyright holders of this software give permission for additional uses of the
source contained in this release of the software as licensed under the Enigma Engine License (From now on
referred as the Engine), applying either version 1.4 of the License, or (at your option) any later version of
the License as published by the copyright holders of version 1.1 of the License document.

3. 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 Engine, even with proprietary software. As long as said works are not a
game development software, in that case refer to clause 6 (Six) of this license.

4. If you copy code from files distributed under the terms of the  GNU General Public License  into a copy of this
software, as this license permits, the exception does not apply to the code that you add in this way.  To avoid
misleading anyone as to the status of such modified files, you must delete this exception notice from such code
and/or adjust the licensing conditions notice accordingly.

5. If you write modifications of your own to this software, it is your choice whether to permit this exception to
apply to your modifications. If you do not wish that, you must delete the exception notice from such code and/or
adjust the licensing conditions notice accordingly.

6. You may use this software to develop a game development software without written permission of the
developers or their legal representatives. Provided that:
a) Said software and any and all modifications included in it are made public and are covered by this same license
without any modification except adding your name to the developers list.
b) Said software may not be linked to proprietary software.

7. It's your responsibility to check that any other software your application links to is compatible with the Enigma
and GPL licenses.

8. You must relay a verbatim copy of this license to any recipient of your modifications to the enigma engine.

Cheers: :)

Postdata:

I don't care much for the clause 5 (Five) as it is, here's a proposed modification to it:

Code: [Select]
5. If you write modifications of your own to this software, you must publish them under dual license: GPL and
the Enigma Engine License. Unless said modifications are for your personal use only (will never leave your computer),
in which case you don't have the obligation to make them public.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Aegar on September 24, 2014, 10:57:44 am
I was excited to use ENIGMA but GPL is a deal-breaker. Seems like this thread has been dead since May, which is a shame... Guess I'll be back in a year to see if there's any progress on a license change.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: DaSpirit on September 24, 2014, 11:31:30 am
First, this thread is old, but Josh has been actively trying to contact lawyers for the last year. None of them have responded accurately yet. This could just be because not all lawyers are familiar with software licenses, and so it is difficult to find a good answer for the issue at hand.

ENIGMA will come with a clause, of some sort, allowing commercial/propietary games, if it does keep GPL. But, ...

We should just use LGPL. Qt and Gtk both are licensed under the LGPL, and I think it's the best of both worlds (where one world allows ENIGMA to keep ownership and the other allows companies to keep the ownership of whatever they created).

LGPL does allow propietary, but you must redistribute source if you have modified the actual library (so if you modify ENIGMA). The catch is that you must include a .dll for that library (static linking is not allowed), and it must be guaranteed that another person can replace that .dll with an official .dll (if you do not break the license, then this is no problem) and have it still work the same. When I say .dll here, I mean dynamic libraries (not just Windows).

There is probably a good reason why we aren't using LGPL though, and I can think of two. 1. People coming from GameMaker love the idea of standalone executables. It's easy to redistribute. 2. Software license compatibility might also be an issue. ENIGMA uses a few third-party libraries which have different licenses. You would have to check the compatibility between each and every library, and if one of them is not compatible with another, then we cannot reditribute it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 12:34:55 pm
First, this thread is old, but Josh has been actively trying to contact lawyers for the last year. None of them have responded accurately yet. This could just be because not all lawyers are familiar with software licenses, and so it is difficult to find a good answer for the issue at hand.

Well difficult maybe in the method used to look for them.  But it is possible, you have to find the right lawyers for the right field, offline, it's possible, if you can afford 3 figures hourly rates :D

But I am confused reading these topics, on ENIGMA's site it does say you are allowed to sell your games.... Which is which ? Most people have no damn clue about licensing and how it works. It should be explained in more simpler terms.

Let's say I distribute my game in EXE form, along with any assets / resource files / other files that go with my game.
Do I have to include the portable ZIP of enigma too ???  In my documentation do I have to include "Powered by ENIGMA engine - enigma-dev.org" ? etc.

Let's say I use ENIGMA unmodified, however, I use external resource handling, encryption and features that are NON enigma in my game, meaning in parallel I write my own C++ code, call it from within my game, am I forced to include my proprietary C++ code? what if I compile the code and "call" it from my game (exe)....... There are lots of unanswered questions.

If there is one thing turning people away more than the community, it's the license, in my opinion.

YoYoGames does not allow GMS to be used to make applications, only "games".  Is this the case with ENIGMA too? Are there restrictions to the type of games / applications you can make?  I'm sure most people using the product are not familiar with all the jargon / legalise used in these licenses...which is why most people probably don't read licenses.......:D



Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: DaSpirit on September 24, 2014, 01:40:52 pm
But I am confused reading these topics, on ENIGMA's site it does say you are allowed to sell your games.... Which is which ? Most people have no damn clue about licensing and how it works. It should be explained in more simpler terms.
The idea is that if you use GPL code (which ENIGMA is using), then you must redistribute whatever you make using that code. GCC is also GPL, but it allows you to create propiatary executables because it has a written exception, which is what Josh has tried to do with ENIGMA (but since he is not a lawyer, it may have flaws and that is why he was trying to consult an actual lawyer).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 01:55:32 pm

The idea is that if you use GPL code (which ENIGMA is using), then you must redistribute whatever you make using that code. GCC is also GPL, but it allows you to create propiatary executables because it has a written exception, which is what

Don't you mean redistribute whatever I used to build my game ? So this means I have to redistribute ENIGMA with my games? Do I include the portable zip or do I have to distribute the entire enigma-dev folders (in its installed form).  ?

I have future plans of using my own built C++ libraries for my projects, which I will use in conjunction with ENIGMA. Do I also have to distribute my own proprietary C++ source with ENIGMA and with my games too????  Example if I build a C++ library to handle encryption and big file resource handling....decide to call it from my game (NOT include it in ENIGMA's source), in other words mixing my proprietary code/engine along with ENIGMA, can I do that ? or does my proprietary stuff have to be revealed too.....? 
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Aegar on September 24, 2014, 01:58:24 pm
Using an established open-source license seems best. LGPL is good for stuff like this (modifying the engine requires sharing the code but anything made with the engine can be closed-sourced and/or sold). In practice, fully open sourcing the engine with a license like BSD or MIT would bring in the most amount of users since many gamedevs of this caliber will probably want to do some private extending of their own.

Plus, for the most part, those who prefer to use BSD/MIT products usually subscribe to the open source philosophy anyway so they will probably give back to the community (either with engine commits, tutorials, free plugins/systems for others to use, etc).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: DaSpirit on September 24, 2014, 02:01:49 pm
Don't you mean redistribute whatever I used to build my game ? So this means I have to redistribute ENIGMA with my games? Do I include the portable zip or do I have to distribute the entire enigma-dev folders (in its installed form).  ?
Sorry, I worded that improperly. GPL requires whatever you made using that GPL code to be GPL as well. So, you would have the post the source code to your game whenever somebody would request it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 02:14:36 pm
But I am confused reading these topics, on ENIGMA's site it does say you are allowed to sell your games.... Which is which ? Most people have no damn clue about licensing and how it works. It should be explained in more simpler terms.
The idea is that if you use GPL code (which ENIGMA is using), then you must redistribute whatever you make using that code. GCC is also GPL, but it allows you to create propiatary executables because it has a written exception, which is what Josh has tried to do with ENIGMA (but since he is not a lawyer, it may have flaws and that is why he was trying to consult an actual lawyer).

Not exactly true, you may use any GPLed product to develop your product (CodeBlocks + GCC + wxWidgets  for instance), and then release it under whatever license you deem apropiate, and it would be legal to do so, yet if you include some libraire that is not permisive then you must use GPL or link dynamically, I don't know what third party libraries ENIGMA uses that would force you to go GPL and if those libraries end up on your game, this would be nice to know, although I doubt very much Harry, Josh, Robert, Ism et all would say you can sell your games if they had any doubts on this issue. As far as I know the libraries used to develop games do allow static linking in commercial development, but then again I could be wrong.

If the issue is the IDE LGM then there's no problem, you can use it to develop under any license you want.

So the only problematic aspect would be that of the engine ENIGMA, since it's under GPL and you need to link statically to it, but the developers have said time and again you can, the need for a license is only to give certainty on the future.

In my humble opinion LGPL with a static linking exception clause is more than enough, but it seems I am the only one to believe so.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 02:22:05 pm
Don't you mean redistribute whatever I used to build my game ? So this means I have to redistribute ENIGMA with my games? Do I include the portable zip or do I have to distribute the entire enigma-dev folders (in its installed form).  ?
Sorry, I worded that improperly. GPL requires whatever you made using that GPL code to be GPL as well. So, you would have the post the source code to your game whenever somebody would request it.

Ok fair enough. Now let's say I use ENIGMA to make a game, but decide NOT to load everything in the IDE and consequently have it compiled in my EXE, but all resources of my game stored in resource files, encrypted, and the handling of that be done by my own C++ engine.
In other words using my proprietary engine/code combined with ENIGMA......In that case the only source code I would need to make available upon request is that of the ENIGMA portion right ? meaning the EGM file for example, and NOT my resource files or the compiled C++ or C++ code of my proprietary engine ? Right?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: DaSpirit on September 24, 2014, 02:29:27 pm
Not exactly true, you may use any GPLed product to develop your product (CodeBlocks + GCC + wxWidgets  for instance), and then release it under whatever license you deem apropiate,
Using Code::Blocks does not mean you're using GPL code. You're not directly using the code, so it does not affect you. However, GCC and ENIGMA both insert their GPL-based code into whatever you make. This is why GCC needed an exception and why ENIGMA needs one now.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 02:46:18 pm
How to get your license approved by the OSI:

http://opensource.org/approval (http://opensource.org/approval)

Static Linking Exception:

Code: [Select]

ENIGMA Free Software Licenses

The ENIGMA engine is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License V3 plus a static link exception.

    You get the full source code. You can examine the code, modify it, and share your modified code under the terms of the LGPL.

    Static linking exception. The copyright holders give you permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that module. An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library. If you modify this library, you must extend this exception to your version of the library.

The ENIGMA engine for Commercial Games

    The ENIGMA engine is safe for use in closed-source games. The LGPL share-alike terms do not apply to games built on top of the ENIGMA engine.

    You do not need a commercial license. The LGPL applies to ENIGMA's own source code, not your games.

Alternative? MPL v2 I think its the same as the LGPL + Static linking exception: Pay special attention to question 8  ;)

https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html (https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html)


Where can you get pro bono advice:

Code: [Select]
Since I don't know where the devs are based this is difficult but:

http://www.mcmillan.ca/pro-bono

http://www.georgialegalaid.org/

http://www.vsb.org/site/pro_bono/resources-for-the-public
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 02:50:29 pm
Don't you mean redistribute whatever I used to build my game ? So this means I have to redistribute ENIGMA with my games? Do I include the portable zip or do I have to distribute the entire enigma-dev folders (in its installed form).  ?
Sorry, I worded that improperly. GPL requires whatever you made using that GPL code to be GPL as well. So, you would have the post the source code to your game whenever somebody would request it.

Ok fair enough. Now let's say I use ENIGMA to make a game, but decide NOT to load everything in the IDE and consequently have it compiled in my EXE, but all resources of my game stored in resource files, encrypted, and the handling of that be done by my own C++ engine.
In other words using my proprietary engine/code combined with ENIGMA......In that case the only source code I would need to make available upon request is that of the ENIGMA portion right ? meaning the EGM file for example, and NOT my resource files or the compiled C++ or C++ code of my proprietary engine ? Right?

Right now and to go by the letter of the licence you need to link dinamically.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 24, 2014, 03:02:00 pm
I don't think the obligation is that you have to redistribute ENIGMA, you just need to accommodate access to and provide information about the program used to make your game or program. Just saying I built this game with ENIGMA, here's the link where you can download it and its source code is suffice.

Additionally what Josh most likely means by you can sell your game, is that you can sell your game and we basically won't give a shit, I go to college I got much better things to do than try to ride someone else's coattails, if you make the next Crappy Bird in ENIGMA and become a millionaire more power to you just don't forget to mention that our engine was used, to do otherwise would be pretty rude. I believe this is pretty reasonable and that any reasonable person would agree with me.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 03:10:20 pm
I don't think the obligation is that you have to redistribute ENIGMA, you just need to accommodate access to and provide information about the program used to make your game or program. Just saying I built this game with ENIGMA, here's the link where you can download it and its source code is suffice.

Exactly right, you don't have to distribute anything else but your game.

Additionally what Josh most likely means by you can sell your game, is that you can sell your game and we basically won't give a shit, I go to college I got much better things to do than try to ride someone else's coattails, if you make the next Crappy Bird in ENIGMA and become a millionaire more power to you just don't forget to mention that our engine was used, to do otherwise would be pretty rude. I believe this is pretty reasonable and that any reasonable person would agree with me.

I agree but we plain users need a bit of legal assurance, and ENIGMA needs a license that gives us that while preventing anybody to take it, modify it and then close the source.

Both can be achieved by the LGPL + linking exception or by the MPL v2, the second option gives anybody involved in the development the assurance of being an official, osi approved license.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on September 24, 2014, 03:52:17 pm
Quote
the second option gives anybody involved in the development the assurance of being an official, osi approved license

The GNU LGPL is OSI-approved. Additional permissions don't make a license any less open source.

I just want to summarize some points, because there seems to have been an explosion of misunderstandings over something very simple:

When you dynamically link or otherwise include any GPL'ed code, such as libraries provided by ENIGMA, the entire program must be under the GPL. This doesn't mean you can't sell copies, it just means you need to give users the same freedom you were given. What the GNU LGPL does is allow you to dynamically link to the program under the GNU LGPL and not release the whole under the GNU LGPL.

What Josh wants to do is also allow static linking, rather than just the dynamic linking allowed by the GNU LGPL, so that everything can be put into a single executable on Windows. The problem with this is it could easily be abused if done wrong; imagine someone taking ENIGMA, making improvements, then wrapping that in a very small program that basically just includes the modified ENIGMA and does its job. Going the other way, the copyleft provisions could accidentally be left too strong.

Personally, I think the concern about having DLLs or other shared object files is silly. Sure, Game Maker users are used to having one file, but it's not a common practice in the first place. Even Windows programs more usually use some sort of installer or just a simple ZIP archive, and if it's even possible on GNU/Linux, I've never seen it there. Besides, consider all the libraries released under the GNU LGPL already; I'm not aware of any case where proprietary software developers rejected these libraries because they wanted to statically link and couldn't.

I say, just use the GNU LGPL, and make sure the way ENIGMA compiles the games dynamically links by default.

One last thing: it would be completely retarded to just make it permissively-licensed. I once heard an anecdote that people who do proprietary software development laugh at people who release their code under permissive licenses, because they can take that code, put it in their proprietary software, and give nothing back. It should be taken with a grain of salt, but it makes perfect sense. Let's say, for example, that ENIGMA manages to get a killer feature added that makes everyone want to migrate away from Game Maker. If it's permissively licensed, YoYo Games can just plop it into Game Maker with virtually zero effort. Don't get stuck in the mindset that "companies are going to release contributions anyway". Corporations are, by definition, amoral entities, driven by profit.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Aegar on September 24, 2014, 04:09:15 pm
Let's say, for example, that ENIGMA manages to get a killer feature added that makes everyone want to migrate away from Game Maker. If it's permissively licensed, YoYo Games can just plop it into Game Maker with virtually zero effort. Don't get stuck in the mindset that "companies are going to release contributions anyway". Corporations are, by definition, amoral entities, driven by profit.

Theoretically, sure. Practically, it rarely works that way. Software adoption is influenced more by ease of access, level of documentation, quality of community, and social factors. This is why less-than-stellar game engines can have huge userbases while technically superior engines can flop. I have never heard of a permissively-licensed project that was actually damaged by stolen code/features.

On the flipside, there are many permissively-licensed projects that have gained popularity due to said licensing. A lot of modern technology is based on projects that use the BSD, MIT, or Apache licenses.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 04:12:14 pm
Quote
the second option gives anybody involved in the development the assurance of being an official, osi approved license

The GNU LGPL is OSI-approved. Additional permissions don't make a license any less open source.

I just want to summarize some points, because there seems to have been an explosion of misunderstandings over something very simple:

When you dynamically link or otherwise include any GPL'ed code, such as libraries provided by ENIGMA, the entire program must be under the GPL. This doesn't mean you can't sell copies, it just means you need to give users the same freedom you were given. What the GNU LGPL does is allow you to dynamically link to the program under the GNU LGPL and not release the whole under the GNU LGPL.

Exactly.

What Josh wants to do is also allow static linking, rather than just the dynamic linking allowed by the GNU LGPL, so that everything can be put into a single executable on Windows. The problem with this is it could easily be abused if done wrong; imagine someone taking ENIGMA, making improvements, then wrapping that in a very small program that basically just includes the modified ENIGMA and does its job. Going the other way, the copyleft provisions could accidentally be left too strong.

Therefore the need for a well writen linking exception or a osi approved license that allows static linking while at the same time protects the ENIGMA code, I believe the only license that does this out of the box is the MPL v2.

Personally, I think the concern about having DLLs or other shared object files is silly. Sure, Game Maker users are used to having one file, but it's not a common practice in the first place. Even Windows programs more usually use some sort of installer or just a simple ZIP archive, and if it's even possible on GNU/Linux, I've never seen it there. Besides, consider all the libraries released under the GNU LGPL already; I'm not aware of any case where proprietary software developers rejected these libraries because they wanted to statically link and couldn't.

In the case of games though it may be good to allow static linkung since I could have two different games made with two different versions of the engine and have no problem at all, in windows this is known as dll hell, never heard of it arising on linux but I have heard hellish stories about needing certain librarie and not finding it, or your system didn't allowed you to install it or you broke it while installing it.

I say, just use the GNU LGPL, and make sure the way ENIGMA compiles the games dynamically links by default.

This may be a good idea and it may not, specially under windows (see above comment)

One last thing: it would be completely retarded to just make it permissively-licensed. I once heard an anecdote that people who do proprietary software development laugh at people who release their code under permissive licenses, because they can take that code, put it in their proprietary software, and give nothing back. It should be taken with a grain of salt, but it makes perfect sense. Let's say, for example, that ENIGMA manages to get a killer feature added that makes everyone want to migrate away from Game Maker. If it's permissively licensed, YoYo Games can just plop it into Game Maker with virtually zero effort. Don't get stuck in the mindset that "companies are going to release contributions anyway". Corporations are, by definition, amoral entities, driven by profit.


Agreed, protect the engine while giving the user the liberty to do whatever he wants except stealing the engine's code. I don't think the whole engine gets emmbeded on your games, but still this may be a point in favor of the linking exception since it specifies what you can do with it (games).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 05:17:39 pm
I don't think the obligation is that you have to redistribute ENIGMA, you just need to accommodate access to and provide information about the program used to make your game or program. Just saying I built this game with ENIGMA, here's the link where you can download it and its source code is suffice.

Additionally what Josh most likely means by you can sell your game, is that you can sell your game and we basically won't give a shit, I go to college I got much better things to do than try to ride someone else's coattails, if you make the next Crappy Bird in ENIGMA and become a millionaire more power to you just don't forget to mention that our engine was used, to do otherwise would be pretty rude. I believe this is pretty reasonable and that any reasonable person would agree with me.

Thanks Robert your post is really reassuring, lol.  But one should never overlook the importance of a license, both to protect the developers and its users.  I know that you would not come after me for the millions of $ I will make selling my game, maybe Josh because he can afford good lawyers now :P but that's another story.  But in all seriousness, I am fair and decent, I PROMISE YOU, I will not forget either of you if I become a millionaire and if I do forget, please remind me ! lol!  A license is still important to protect against those less well intentioned users whilst at the same time protecting the user as to now discourage people from using said product.

It is important to note, yes one uses ENIGMA, it is an ENGINE.....but that's what it, an engine, it does not "MAKE" games.  You still need to build the game, sounds, resources, story, etc.  ENIGMA, unlike some other turn key engines does not come with prefabs or any pre-made stuff...... So when you mention "made with ENIGMA" certain people might say "oh this is yet another kiddie game making tool where you click and build type" which is far from it.  I like when I make games to brag that I bust my arse making the game (original content) whilst at the same time saying proudly that the game is powered by ENIGMA engine, not MADE by it. but I guess that is open for another debate :D
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 24, 2014, 05:44:12 pm
Damn guys, is this still going on?

This is why I bailed on Enigma 9 months ago. The leads don't seem to have any direction. Which is a bummer for the project.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 06:19:30 pm
Damn guys, is this still going on?

This is why I bailed on Enigma 9 months ago. The leads don't seem to have any direction. Which is a bummer for the project.

And in the process you erased your contributions to the forum, very generous of you, they "have no direction", and yet the project moves by steps and leaps, and no thanks to you or the people so eager to criticize those who give their knoledge, hard work and precious time so others can use the resulting product.

I for one am very thankfull of their eforts.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 06:24:47 pm
First well said eds !!!!

And those criticisms come from someone with advanced skills he could have been part of ENIGMA and made it better.
but he decided to support a company that has made some questionable decisions and taken a specific direction, all over the place, has its users doing their work and profiting from it.  His choice, his loss.......

Damn guys, is this still going on?

This is why I bailed on Enigma 9 months ago. The leads don't seem to have any direction. Which is a bummer for the project.

9 months already, damn time flies..... :P

Sorry mate but that is your loss...... I understand why license has been trailing for too long, but glad I stuck with ENIGMA, many things were fixed since you left.....Remember the fonts issue, that was a pain in my arse and with Robert's help, and long testing sessions managed to find a patch that worked for all.  The full screen DX9 issue was fixed, I stumbled upon a quick script fix, lead Robert to find the REAL problem which was simple, and lead him to fix lost devices.  Lots have been fixed and improved.  Your departure was nothing short of suspicious in my honest opinion, deleting your traces and posts, but that's another story..... You shared the same concerns about GM and the market place, the very same area you are developing in and helping them, nice.  You chose your side, good for you, in my opinion this product shows more promise, you seemed interested and were a good contributor of thoughts, and yet you have had enough skill to contribute to this project, but didn't...... you had uncanny interest for the video,AND ENIGMA then left SUDDENLY.....Under VERY suspicious circumstances.

Sorry but the whole license thing is an excuse, and I don't believe it is the only reason you left......and you might have had other motives for coming here in the first place, or at least this is the impression I have, maybe wrong, but the deleting posts and trails and social accounts, that sends red flags.

No matter what still see the benefits of using ENIGMA over GM, at least for a windows developer perspective.  BTW, nice initiative on your video extension, that would be a good addition to ENIGMA, since ENIGMA does not have the sandbox restriction, so you could make massive games, encryption, big file resources, resource handling as you wish, where GM still has so many dead ends and limitations.  I think ENIGMA deserves more credit than that.

You've had your pissing match with the devs, many have but then you kissed and made up and moved on, in my opinion, this is the impression I get, this was planned, you showed interest for video
but then left, so were your interests genuine or did you get what you came for and left ?

You made your choice, that's your call....You could have been part of it and helped make it better!!! regardless of your thoughts on the developers......you be your own person, this is an open source, contributor driven stuff, you learn to like the product and  channel out the negativity then you reap its benefits.

Congratulations of becoming a new shareholder of yours truly, said other side of the grass........(evil grin) :P ;) The very same company you had negative criticism about not long before you "abduction", and same for its market place.

Enjoy GameMaker and I hope it meets your needs. And I hope that GMS 2 which is due in 2015, will also meet your expectations....  As to ENIGMA's license, don't hold your breath mate, come back in 10 years and you'll see the same discussions.

But if you cannot see all the fixes and improvements done to ENIGMA since you left, then.......well......let's leave it at that.:D  You seem keen on hanging around the forum, which you have done since leaving, too bad you didn't use that energy for helping make ENIGMA better.

Cheers
Go and continue making loads of money to a company that takes 70% cut from your hard work and labour.

I admit though that I too had thoughts of leaving few times, but sure glad I stayed.  Sure there was some rough patch and few disagreements and tension but that is all past, and we are moving forward.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 24, 2014, 06:46:50 pm
I have to mention that rushing us to force a license on the project doesn't help either, this is something that should be done slowly and be well thought out instead of making rash decisions in the interest of both you the user and we the developers. I'll admit that it would best solved by an expert team of lawyers, which I don't have the money for, but only they can sit down and rigorously disseminate all the provisions of various licenses and give the best legal advice because they are the ones trained to do that.

Additionally the community is currently underrepresented, we have plenty of more users but several of them will appear only to post an issue but here on the forums they are not as active, our Twitter account retweets and everything have more of our active users. Further, this poll had confirmation bias to begin with which construes the results.
Quote from: Survey
A less restrictive copyleft license like the MPL is my choice. Changes to ENIGMA's code still have to be shared, but game developers can license their code or keep it proprietary.
While it may sound harmless the less informed member will implicitly take that into account.

Quote from: Darkstar2
Cheers
Go and continue making loads of money to a company that takes 70% cut from your hard work and labour.
Correct, I am sure YoYoGame's license is a lot less volatile and restrictive as the GPL.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 07:05:22 pm
I have to mention that rushing us to force a license on the project doesn't help either, this is something that should be done slowly and be well thought out instead of making rash decisions in the interest of both you the user and we the developers.

Yeah it's important not to "rush" things, but this whole license thing has been trailing too damn much.  What amount of time do you think it requires to get something sorted out, 100 years ? 200 years ? It's really sad that this whole license thing is one vicious circle going round and round and round and round.......Though I disagree with him STRONGLY, that this is an excuse and valid reason for having left the site.

Also Robert, the YYG license does not force you to release or make available your source code to your games.  You are required to use a paragraph in relation to the YoYo Runner and YoYoGames as its IP holder....and there are restrictions when distributing your games through YYG's assistance or by submitting on their store, site, etc......you don't have to take that route, they also restrict on the type of products you can make with GM..... :)



Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 24, 2014, 07:21:42 pm
I have to mention that rushing us to force a license on the project doesn't help either, this is something that should be done slowly and be well thought out instead of making rash decisions in the interest of both you the user and we the developers. I'll admit that it would best solved by an expert team of lawyers, which I don't have the money for, but only they can sit down and rigorously disseminate all the provisions of various licenses and give the best legal advice because they are the ones trained to do that.

Additionally the community is currently underrepresented, we have plenty of more users but several of them will appear only to post an issue but here on the forums they are not as active, our Twitter account retweets and everything have more of our active users. Further, this poll had confirmation bias to begin with which construes the results.
Quote from: Survey
A less restrictive copyleft license like the MPL is my choice. Changes to ENIGMA's code still have to be shared, but game developers can license their code or keep it proprietary.
While it may sound harmless the less informed member will implicitly take that into account.

Quote from: Darkstar2
Cheers
Go and continue making loads of money to a company that takes 70% cut from your hard work and labour.
Correct, I am sure YoYoGame's license is a lot less volatile and restrictive as the GPL.

Who is rushing anybody? the topic has been dormant for months and in my opinion the dev team can take another four years to decide on a license if they need.

I saw the post did some searching and found somethings that may or may not help in solving the issue.

Agreed that the number of posts does not reflect the number of users.

Agreed the poll was a loaded proposition (And in reality not really usefull since the devs are the ones who should evaluate and choose the licence)

Ja! yea sure a propietary licence less restrictive than the GPL, that'll be the day!

In short I agree 100% with all you said and have no rush on any licence, I don't believe I'll have any game worth selling in less that four years maybe more. Further, I believe most users think is better a well thouth licence than a rushed one.

Keep up the good work and who knows, maybe I'll find a lawyer willing to help for free.

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 07:53:31 pm
Finding a skilled lawyer to deal with software licensing issues, pro bono ? Good luck with that.  Note that I stressed the word skilled and accurate in the field.
You CAN sell your games I believe the devs made it clear they have no time to take you to court and siphon your bank accounts  ;D ;D ;D ;D though if you end up making tons of cash from your product most people I would hope, would do the fair thing.  As people stealing from code, erasing copyrights and claiming their own, that's another issue that should be looked and protected against.  Not the poor guy selling his games as face it, I have yet to hear of an Indie game developer who makes millions of $, right, maybe that bird flappy thingy but he bailed out - and maybe the minecraft guy who now sold his soul to Microsoft. :P  Otherwise, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon....and if it does and one makes $10 million from an ENIGMA game, i'm sure they won't mind abiding by Josh/Robert's demands.....one could live on the interest of this kind of money so who's going to argue ! LOL.
Or I could take my $10 million and move to Mexico. :P


Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: DaSpirit on September 24, 2014, 09:14:02 pm
I would very like MPL but allowing static linking sounds odd, though, because then you cannot validate when an executable has broke the license rules. I guess we can leave that to morals. MPL got most votes in the poll! I hope something happens with it!
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 24, 2014, 09:14:50 pm
I don't want to get off topic but I do want to refute your assertion Darkstar2, there has been plenty of studies about how effective Public Defense Attorneys are vs private attorneys and there is only a minimal margin of difference. Usually however other things such as the public defense resources factor in, because a lot of low SES or minority persons can not afford attorneys.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 24, 2014, 11:12:23 pm
I'm sure this can be open for debate and some might disagree, that you'd get the same chance of winning a case with a public defender vs. private attorney, but in terms of legal advice, that might another story.

Also if not mistaken there are requirements in order to qualify for public attorneys aren't there ?

ENIGMA might be able to find some FREE LEGAL advice.....but to proof and make the license legal and official would require a paid service.....nobody will do that FREE.  Having advice is one thing, but legalizing your document is another, and that can be costly...so the other alternative would be to do it on your own and get advice on that !   Or submitting this problem on a crowd sourcing platform and get thousands of feedback.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 24, 2014, 11:24:34 pm
Now as far as that goes, Public Defenders as an example are generally criminal defense attorneys, and interns would just be practicing attorneys in any field of law.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 24, 2014, 11:38:44 pm
@Darkstar2 - sent you a PM, not sure if it went through with this freaky PM system - LOL. ;)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 25, 2014, 12:42:22 am
Yes it did, you have to wait until you get confirmation in green.

Somehow the forum has been slow lately when hitting reply it takes a long time to process.....wasn't like that before, though PM always took a long time.

Welcome back, and like I said, don't blame people for having doubts, there have been many arguments against you and all combined did not look good and you left under very suspicious conditions,
not saying a word, then viewing the forum, etc.  So glad to know you are not a spy, the CIA, the NSA, or the (I was going to write something inappropriate :D) :P :P

You inspired me to write a film and submit it to a production company. I think this could be a box office hit I will PM you about this idea :P

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on September 25, 2014, 01:35:04 am
@Darkstar2 and Robert :

You can at least try to get said free advice, after all is for an opensource free product, also if you write your own licence and submit it to the OSI and they accept it chances are it is legal and will hold in any court, since that is what they do. Or use the LGPL with a static linking exception or the MPL v2 as it is.

@DaSpirit: Static linking odd? why? many libre projects allow just that, even for comercial/closed-source use.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 25, 2014, 01:38:13 am
Personally I would rather all libs be linked in the EXE.  Doesn't ENIGMA already do  that, so if it's done then why separate the libs.....The only stuff I don't mind keeping non linked to EXE are large resources, as I will have my own C++ code handling them dynamically in and out of memory as needed. 
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 25, 2014, 01:55:55 am
Straying off-topic a bit. But, I prefer static linking all the way. Less mess, more portable.

Darkstar2 - Yes, I can see how my sudden leaving could be seen as suspicious. But, as I said via PM (in much more detail) it was a bad time in my life, internet wise.

So if you guys are happy to have me back, I am more than happy to contribute to the project. No deleting threads this time round - LOL :)

As I said in the PM, deleting wasn't the right thing to do. I just wanted out of the net - was a crazy time. Wasn't just here, so don't stress about that. Hard to explain unless you have been there. :)

Now back on topic :)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on September 25, 2014, 06:17:36 am
why separate the libs

Please pay attention. Dynamically linking instead of statically linking by default would allow proprietary programs to use ENIGMA if it were under the GNU LGPL, eliminating the need to write up the legal language required for permitting static linking without leaving a loophole.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 25, 2014, 06:48:33 am
why separate the libs

Please pay attention. Dynamically linking instead of statically linking by default would allow proprietary programs to use ENIGMA if it were under the GNU LGPL, eliminating the need to write up the legal language required for permitting static linking without leaving a loophole.

I see what you are getting at. So, by dynamic linking we don't need to supply our own source code as it is not a derivative if Enigma as such. Right?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on September 25, 2014, 07:26:27 am
Further, this poll had confirmation bias to begin with which construes the results.
Quote from: Survey
A less restrictive copyleft license like the MPL is my choice. Changes to ENIGMA's code still have to be shared, but game developers can license their code or keep it proprietary.
While it may sound harmless the less informed member will implicitly take that into account.

Each of the statements in the poll were meant to be something that a voter might say. I was attempting to make each choice as neutral as possible, but I can see your point about the bias of this sentence. It's quite possible that my leanings towards the MPL affected what I wrote in the poll. It's also possible that some voters were influenced by the wording of that sentence. Just stating the license name and providing links to each license would have been more appropriate. No bias was intended, but I am biased towards the MPL. I can't argue with you there.

However, it's not like this poll is officially sanctioned by Enigma's developers or the community. I created the poll out of curiosity about the community's opinion on licensing. I didn't and don't expect it will be a a deciding factor for the copyright holders. I might have hoped it would be, but I never expected it. :)

What I want to see eventually, is a poll made by a developer when the time comes to choose a license officially. Robert: If you or any of the other developers create your own poll, I'll gladly close this one and link to the new poll. Bias or not, I think it's clear from the votes here and the numerous discussions on the forums that the majority want a license that's more permissive than the GPL.

Ultimately, it's up to the copyright holders to decide on a new license, but I'm hoping that a community vote on a license will be taken into account.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 25, 2014, 10:37:26 am
Rezolyze, I'm sorry I may have been a little overly critical, but you can understand where I am coming from. After 8 pages I kind of lost track of what this was all about so I lost sight of the poll's intentions. It is good that you stimulated the debate however, it is an important issue in the community. I am for whatever keeps everyone happy, protects all of our rights to the fullest extent, retains a great amount of freedom for both the developers and the user, and stops someone from taking our source code and selling it separately as part of another game making tool. And I think we should not make rash decisions and inform ourselves of the implications to the fullest extent, have you guys even studied any provisions of the various licenses over the last 9 months?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: IsmAvatar on September 25, 2014, 10:40:02 am
I haven't read through this entire thread, so forgive me if this has already been mentioned.

The code in ENIGMA is currently licensed under the GPL3+. This is code contributed by many talented programmers, each individually having their code licensed (or relicensed) to the GPL3+. Relicensing an entire product is not a trivial matter, and even less trivial due to its current license. Relicensing ENIGMA (or LateralGM) would require *every single code contributor* to agree to have their contributions relicensed to the new license. It cannot be done democratically (with a vote). If any single developer does not agree, their code is stuck to the old license, meaning you either have to give up or scrap *all* of their code. Which could potentially leave the product broken, so you'd have to have someone rewrite those code sections from scratch using the new license (or compatible), and it can't be identical to the old code.

For example, I am a well-known contributor to some of the modules in ENIGMA. You'll see my name appear at the top of some files. I for one intentionally wrote my code with the GPL3+ license (with option for a special exception for the games). I do NOT consent to having my code relicensed to the BSD or MIT licenses. I do not want a permissive license, as I do not want to see a proprietary competitor to ENIGMA stealing ENIGMA's code and not sharing their own improvements (which I think Josh mentioned).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 25, 2014, 02:32:58 pm
Straying off-topic a bit. But, I prefer static linking all the way. Less mess, more portable.

Darkstar2 - Yes, I can see how my sudden leaving could be seen as suspicious. But, as I said via PM (in much more detail) it was a bad time in my life, internet wise.

Understood but keep in mind I posted this before getting your PM.  Welcome back, so you're not a spy or didn't rob anybody, good to know :P Glad you understood at least why things seemed doubtful :D and 9 months passed so quickly. 

Quote
So if you guys are happy to have me back, I am more than happy to contribute to the project. No deleting threads this time round - LOL :)

Well you'll be happy as there has been discussion on making place more attractive as a community and try avoiding what sends people away, so things are more peaceful compared to the time you were in the middle cross fire :D

Quote
As I said in the PM, deleting wasn't the right thing to do. I just wanted out of the net - was a crazy time. Wasn't just here,

Understood, I know where you are coming from.  I almost hit that delete button myself.

Quote
so don't stress about that. Hard to explain unless you have been there. :)

Been there more than once, I've taken long breaks from social media before, not the internet though but anything social media (messaging, etc.).

Quote
Now back on topic :)

Yes I too prefer the portability, meaning the engine and libraries with the EXE.
It's enough that people have to worry about dependencies and files all over the place :D

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 25, 2014, 02:49:29 pm
why separate the libs

Please pay attention. Dynamically linking instead of statically linking by default would allow proprietary programs to use ENIGMA if it were under the GNU LGPL, eliminating the need to write up the legal language required for permitting static linking without leaving a loophole.

I agree with lone on this one, static linking, less messy and more portable.
That's the whole idea started in GM, build games fast and create an executable......not create an executable and dependencies / files requirements.
I guess there are pros and cons to every method, you have developers now saying they don't consent to have their code change licenses, and users expressing concerns, so basically it can remain a dead end.  I guess it all comes down to good faith at this point.  I understand from the developers point of view, nobody wants to have their  code stolen, used, sold and not made available, and get credit, on the other hand I'm sure you can understand that neither does the hard working game developer... and ISM raised a good point, you'd have to get consent from every code contributor, that's another hurdle.....
I wonder if these kinds of discussions and long debates on licensing are present in other open source projects.  There are days I wish this project was closed source......I would have gladly paid to use ENIGMA, and not all this bloody mess and headache over being forced to release your game code, assets, etc.....that is insane. then you have 2 developers saying they have no time or energy to go after people's code, etc.  it is a mess...so it all comes down to good faith.  A solid license protects you legally, but does not protect against malicious people......it would be difficult for ENIGMA to prove an EXE was made with ENIGMA, to establish the game is ENIGMA, someone with knowledge can remove the traces of ENIGMA, conceal and hide......and with any code, so neither the ENIGMA developer or the game developer is 100% protected.  What about someone who steals your code but does not earn a substantial amount of money ?  All the energy, legal fees, etc..... 
I don't think this will ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but that should not prevent people from using ENIGMA, including myself, as I jokingly said, once I made my $10 million I'll make a generous donation ! lol.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on September 25, 2014, 02:50:33 pm
The only way we can track who is an actual contributor is by using the headers. So we could just crawl them and make a list of who contributed. If someone in that list is no longer a contributor and can't be got hold of, then we could rewrite the necessary parts. Sadly a lot of the code has been rewritten numerous times, yet people in those headers remained. So it's possible that the person didn't have anything to do with the new code.
So what I am saying is that it could be hard to understand who is a contributor and who isn't. What is the practice in this regard?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on September 25, 2014, 04:07:17 pm
I agree with lone on this one, static linking, less messy and more portable.
That's the whole idea started in GM, build games fast and create an executable......not create an executable and dependencies / files requirements.

Keep in mind, just using the GNU LGPL wouldn't make static linking impossible for everyone. It would still be possible for GPL-compatible (https://gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#GPLCompatibleLicenses) games. Actually, I think this would be an advantage: it might encourage some people to release their code under a GPL-compatible license for the privilege of distributing a single executable, yet I don't think it's such an important feature that it will cause people who are hard-set on making their games proprietary flock to Game Maker instead based on it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 25, 2014, 04:35:07 pm
The only way we can track who is an actual contributor is by using the headers. So we could just crawl them and make a list of who contributed. If someone in that list is no longer a contributor and can't be got hold of, then we could rewrite the necessary parts. Sadly a lot of the code has been rewritten numerous times, yet people in those headers remained. So it's possible that the person didn't have anything to do with the new code.
So what I am saying is that it could be hard to understand who is a contributor and who isn't. What is the practice in this regard?

A good example of this is the recent  contributors to LGM, they have not put their name in the (c), I also have not seen new names in the headers. But you're right, this whole thing is a mess and hard to track proving exactly my point Harri :D

Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 25, 2014, 04:36:50 pm
So are you going to ask your users to start installing dependencies and making sure they have the necessary libs to run your game ?  Perhaps a poll asking what people prefer, a single EXE or dependencies/requirements and a mess.

I guess it's obvious what most people using these tools would use.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 25, 2014, 05:36:47 pm
Quote from: Darkstar2
A good example of this is the recent  contributors to LGM, they have not put their name in the (c),
You just reminded me of something very important, I forgot to mention that to sorlok and egofree. It's an honest mistake I never added myself to the headers when I first started and I still forget quite a lot to add myself to the copyright headers, in fact, I should have added myself to XLIB main/window headers a while back because I've made significant improvements to those files.

I have sent them both the following message:
Quote from: RobertBColton
Hello egofree, I am writing to inform you of your rights as a contributor to the LGM/ENIGMA code base. When you sent us a pull request you should have included your name in the copyright headers, usually changing one or two lines does not warrant adding yourself as a contributor but you made substantial changes to several files. The standard is to include yourself on the line with the year you contributed, if the file has not been edited in the previous year you should add a new line with your name and the copyright year. I would like to request that for the protection of your intellectual property and the project that you submit a pull request updating the copyright headers of files you have contributed to so that I may review them and pull them.

This is the topic where I was reminded, I was going to message you at some point but forgot:
http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1832.msg22334;boardseen#new

Thank you,
Robert

And I know which files they've edited so I can verify to their changes.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on September 25, 2014, 05:45:24 pm
Rezolyze, I'm sorry I may have been a little overly critical, but you can understand where I am coming from. After 8 pages I kind of lost track of what this was all about so I lost sight of the poll's intentions.
It's not a problem, Robert. You have a valid point and I wasn't offended. With the discussion about licensing spanning many years and multiple threads, it's tough to keep it all in perspective.

The code in ENIGMA is currently licensed under the GPL3+. This is code contributed by many talented programmers, each individually having their code licensed (or relicensed) to the GPL3+. Relicensing an entire product is not a trivial matter, and even less trivial due to its current license. Relicensing ENIGMA (or LateralGM) would require *every single code contributor* to agree to have their contributions relicensed to the new license. It cannot be done democratically (with a vote). If any single developer does not agree, their code is stuck to the old license, meaning you either have to give up or scrap *all* of their code. Which could potentially leave the product broken, so you'd have to have someone rewrite those code sections from scratch using the new license (or compatible), and it can't be identical to the old code.
I completely agree with everything you've written above. The only thing I would add is: We're talking about relicensing ENIGMA's engine code, the code that would be redistributed in executable form with a compiled game. LateralGM and the parser/compiler would and should remain GPL licensed. I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise.

For example, I am a well-known contributor to some of the modules in ENIGMA. You'll see my name appear at the top of some files. I for one intentionally wrote my code with the GPL3+ license (with option for a special exception for the games). I do NOT consent to having my code relicensed to the BSD or MIT licenses. I do not want a permissive license, as I do not want to see a proprietary competitor to ENIGMA stealing ENIGMA's code and not sharing their own improvements (which I think Josh mentioned).

I see the MPL v2 as a fair compromise between the GPL v3 and a permissive license like the BSD or MIT license. The MPL is still a copyleft license like the GPL, but it allows for linking non-MPL code to MPL code. It's just as viral as the GPL except where linking is concerned. It was designed with the purpose of being a bridge between copyleft licensed code all other types of licensed/proprietary code.

However, it's not my intention to get into another long-running debate over licenses. I can understand why most people wouldn't want to comb through so many pages of discussion to arrive at a license choice. I've got an idea that should simplify the discussion, but I'll need everyone's help to implement it. I'll post more about it soon.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on September 25, 2014, 05:45:42 pm
Depending on how accurate the repo is, you could just look at this: https://github.com/enigma-dev/enigma-dev/graphs/contributors
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 25, 2014, 06:00:47 pm
Heh, it's not actually accurate Rusky it removed me as top contributor and blanked all my contributions after I changed my email.

Quote from: Rezolyze
I completely agree with everything you've written above. The only thing I would add is: We're talking about relicensing ENIGMA's engine code, the code that would be redistributed in executable form with a compiled game. LateralGM and the parser/compiler would and should remain GPL licensed. I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise.
That was the other thing I was going to mention to her as well, the only code to relicense is the ENIGMA engine/system.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on September 25, 2014, 06:23:02 pm
So are you going to ask your users to start installing dependencies and making sure they have the necessary libs to run your game ?

No, don't be silly. The only difference is instead of sending just an executable, you send an executable + some DLLs or other shared object files.

Honestly, sending a standalone executable is a bad idea in the first place. I haven't used Windows or Game Maker in a long time, but my memory is that virus scanners and download managers tend to be very suspicious of Windows executables downloaded on their own. You can't really blame them; a lot of trojan horses take the form of exectuable files disguised as other types of files (or at least they used to).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rusky on September 25, 2014, 06:49:31 pm
Robert- You should be able to get a list of users from Git itself then, if GitHub won't show unknown emails.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: sorlok_reaves on September 25, 2014, 10:36:57 pm
You just reminded me of something very important, I forgot to mention that to sorlok and egofree. It's an honest mistake I never added myself to the headers when I first started and I still forget quite a lot to add myself to the copyright headers, in fact, I should have added myself to XLIB main/window headers a while back because I've made significant improvements to those files.

Thanks for the message; I'll dig through my changes and see which files I made substantial changes to.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 25, 2014, 11:26:11 pm
So are you going to ask your users to start installing dependencies and making sure they have the necessary libs to run your game ?  Perhaps a poll asking what people prefer, a single EXE or dependencies/requirements and a mess.

I guess it's obvious what most people using these tools would use.

I certainly prefer single exe all the way. But, if you ask 'those who shalt not be referenced' (ok, YYG :)). The say the former option, pack all of the dependencies in to a big ass installer package.

I 'had it out' with them about this a long time ago, because they pack d3dx9_43.dll with the compiled app but not xinput1_3.dll so gamepad support breaks when you don't have all DX runtimes installed.

So, with your 4 MB game you should 'supposedly' include no less than 100 MB worth of supporting files.

100 MB DX redists, VC2008 redist, oh and you are using a poorly written extension that was built in VC2010 and dynamic links as well? - better add those redists too then.  ???

Stuff that. Single executable all the way thanks ;)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: TheExDeus on September 26, 2014, 03:30:32 am
I think we should just take the contributor list Git provides and use that as a baseline. If a contributor from the past, not in that list, appears and wants credit/has problems with license change, then we can look at it on per-person basis. It's just that GPL doesn't have any guidelines on this as far as I know. They say that changing a license EVERYONE must agree, but if we don't know everyone? How can we be sure? If we change it without a person agreeing, even if we don't know if that person even contributed, then is the "law" on their side?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on September 26, 2014, 05:40:30 am
They say that changing a license EVERYONE must agree, but if we don't know everyone? How can we be sure? If we change it without a person agreeing, even if we don't know if that person even contributed, then is the "law" on their side?

This has nothing to do with the GNU GPL, it's copyright law. Every person who made a substantial contribution to ENIGMA holds copyright on that contribution. By default, it is illegal to redistribute that work. The contributors have each individually given permission to distribute their contributions under the GNU GPL. The only relicensing that the GNU GPL allows is to either a later version of the GNU GPL if it's under version "n or any later version", or the GNU AGPL.

You can't just assume that anyone who doesn't respond agrees to whatever license change you think of. Ridiculous as it is, copyright even persists after death (more than half a century after the author's death, to be more precise). You have to do the opposite: if you can't figure out who wrote a particular portion, you must assume that you cannot relicense it, and rewrite that portion from scratch.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 26, 2014, 06:28:46 am
Really? That's pretty scary.

I have no idea on GNU licensing whatsoever. I would have just assumed that once source is committed to the project, the project would own it.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on September 26, 2014, 06:52:51 am
Really? That's pretty scary.

I have no idea on GNU licensing whatsoever. I would have just assumed that once source is committed to the project, the project would own it.

Actually, it's not GNU's GPL fault, it's a matter of re-licensing something, which means contributors should agree to the new license.
You can re-license without asking only if:
- the licenses are compatible (e.g. from LGPL to GPL)
- the contributors signed a CLA (Contributor License Agreement) giving the project ownership of their contributions

Here's an example (https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/Contributing#contributor-license-agreement) from a very popular project.

When you contribute to a project under an Open Source license you are not renouncing ownership, just giving the project the right to use your contributions under the terms of that license.
CLAs are usually there to specify that you are also transferring ownership (so the receiving end can do as they please, including re-license your contribution).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on September 26, 2014, 07:35:57 am
The FSF also often has copyright transferred to it, though in that case it's more so the FSF can more easily enforce copyleft than to allow relicensing (they don't tend to weaken existing copyleft, and they never sell exceptions).

Quote
That's pretty scary.

In what way? If this wasn't the case, copyleft wouldn't work.

Or are you referring to the ridiculous duration of copyright monopolies?
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: IsmAvatar on September 26, 2014, 09:57:21 am
The code in ENIGMA is currently licensed under the GPL3+. This is code contributed by many talented programmers, each individually having their code licensed (or relicensed) to the GPL3+. Relicensing an entire product is not a trivial matter, and even less trivial due to its current license. Relicensing ENIGMA (or LateralGM) would require *every single code contributor* to agree to have their contributions relicensed to the new license. It cannot be done democratically (with a vote). If any single developer does not agree, their code is stuck to the old license, meaning you either have to give up or scrap *all* of their code. Which could potentially leave the product broken, so you'd have to have someone rewrite those code sections from scratch using the new license (or compatible), and it can't be identical to the old code.
I completely agree with everything you've written above. The only thing I would add is: We're talking about relicensing ENIGMA's engine code, the code that would be redistributed in executable form with a compiled game. LateralGM and the parser/compiler would and should remain GPL licensed. I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise.
Was just providing LGM as an example of another GPL project in which relicensing would be difficult. I know you guys never mentioned it, but I did recently get a private message from someone asking if I'd be interested in relicensing LGM. Also, for the record, even though LGM and ENIGMA are separate projects, they do interact together and are used together. In order for this interaction to occur, they require either compatible licenses or licenses that permit this interaction. I don't recall exactly how far this goes, but it could be worth looking into to ensure that you don't have to abandon LGM as the interface just because you chose a more permissive license!

For example, I am a well-known contributor to some of the modules in ENIGMA. You'll see my name appear at the top of some files. I for one intentionally wrote my code with the GPL3+ license (with option for a special exception for the games). I do NOT consent to having my code relicensed to the BSD or MIT licenses. I do not want a permissive license, as I do not want to see a proprietary competitor to ENIGMA stealing ENIGMA's code and not sharing their own improvements (which I think Josh mentioned).

I see the MPL v2 as a fair compromise between the GPL v3 and a permissive license like the BSD or MIT license. The MPL is still a copyleft license like the GPL, but it allows for linking non-MPL code to MPL code. It's just as viral as the GPL except where linking is concerned. It was designed with the purpose of being a bridge between copyleft licensed code all other types of licensed/proprietary code.

However, it's not my intention to get into another long-running debate over licenses. I can understand why most people wouldn't want to comb through so many pages of discussion to arrive at a license choice. I've got an idea that should simplify the discussion, but I'll need everyone's help to implement it. I'll post more about it soon.
If you guys decide to go with MPL2, I'll consider it.

That's all from me for now. Proceed :-)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 26, 2014, 12:53:05 pm
Mmmm, IsmAvatar, I am not sure about what you are saying because the extent to which ENIGMA and LGM work together is limited, the same could be accomplished in LGM with a Studio plugin which I had contemplated before. I think more of that would reside in the plugin for LGM wouldn't it? Or probably not since the license we want for ENIGMA is to stop people from fixing important bugs and closing off the source code to us.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on September 26, 2014, 08:55:55 pm
In order for this interaction to occur, they require either compatible licenses or licenses that permit this interaction. I don't recall exactly how far this goes, but it could be worth looking into to ensure that you don't have to abandon LGM as the interface just because you chose a more permissive license!

Rest assured, the compiler will remain GPL. Code produced by the compiler belongs to the user, as code produced by InkScape belongs to its users. The reason user games must be GPL is because the engine is GPL.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: lonewolff on September 26, 2014, 09:45:32 pm
In what way? If this wasn't the case, copyleft wouldn't work.

Or are you referring to the ridiculous duration of copyright monopolies?

As I said, I really have no licencing experience whatsoever.

I think I understand copyleft - pretty much any derivatives or forks must adhere to the licence of the original and cant be closed sourced etc. Is this right?

The scary part I was reffering to is that contributors still have full legal right to their source code once it is 'donated' to the project. I would have thought it would become owned by 'the project'.

I'd say just put a clause in the licence to that effect. Same thing that happens when a coder becomes an employee of a company, even though the individual codes it, they have no legal right to it when submitted.

As I said, just take any of this as a suggestion as I have no idea on the licencing ins and outs. :)

I know from how long this has dragged out though, that this must be a turd of an area in the business side of things.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Darkstar2 on September 26, 2014, 10:20:08 pm
Spot on, this is why I agree with lonewolff 100% on this one. 
So are you going to ask your users to start installing dependencies and making sure they have the necessary libs to run your game ?  Perhaps a poll asking what people prefer, a single EXE or dependencies/requirements and a mess.

I guess it's obvious what most people using these tools would use.

I certainly prefer single exe all the way. But, if you ask 'those who shalt not be referenced' (ok, YYG :)). The say the former option, pack all of the dependencies in to a big ass installer package.

I 'had it out' with them about this a long time ago, because they pack d3dx9_43.dll with the compiled app but not xinput1_3.dll so gamepad support breaks when you don't have all DX runtimes installed.

So, with your 4 MB game you should 'supposedly' include no less than 100 MB worth of supporting files.

100 MB DX redists, VC2008 redist, oh and you are using a poorly written extension that was built in VC2010 and dynamic links as well? - better add those redists too then.  ???

Stuff that. Single executable all the way thanks ;)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: egofree on September 27, 2014, 02:49:40 am
Quote from: Darkstar2
A good example of this is the recent  contributors to LGM, they have not put their name in the (c),
You just reminded me of something very important, I forgot to mention that to sorlok and egofree. It's an honest mistake I never added myself to the headers when I first started and I still forget quite a lot to add myself to the copyright headers, in fact, I should have added myself to XLIB main/window headers a while back because I've made significant improvements to those files.

I've already included my name in the headers. Perhaps i forgot sometimes to put my name, but in general, it's there.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Goombert on September 27, 2014, 03:13:47 am
Hmmm I see your name in a couple of places where I'd think to look so ok I'll take your word for it.
https://github.com/IsmAvatar/LateralGM/blob/master/org/lateralgm/subframes/RoomFrame.java#L6
Just remember to update headers of the files you change! I can not stress it enough. :)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on September 27, 2014, 11:29:48 pm
Here's an interesting read about how VLC's core and some modules were relicensed to LGPL: How to properly(?) relicense a large open source project - part 1 (http://www.jbkempf.com/blog/post/2012/How-to-properly-relicense-a-large-open-source-project). The author also writes about how he got information on who modified what piece of code using git, grep and awk. If he can do it with hundreds of VLC developers, then I'm sure we can too. :)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on October 03, 2014, 09:07:02 am
OK, this took a lot longer than I expected, but here it is: ENIGMA's Engine Code - License Comparison (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2270). This is the first draft and there may be some errors. Please keep any replies in that topic to factual information you'd like added, changed or removed. It's meant as a reference for the forums. I hope that people find it useful.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on October 03, 2014, 09:31:57 am
What does "Prevent proprietary fixes or features" mean? You claim that the LGPL doesn't do this, but the way I interpret "proprietary fixes or features" is "make proprietary versions of the library", which the LGPL prohibits.

This is an issue that Josh seems to be the most concerned about. He doesn't want a license that would allow some entity to close source some bug fixes or new features for ENIGMA's engine and release it as a new and improved product. Here's an example (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1719.msg17326#msg17326) of how something like that could happen.

The problem is: no one has suggested/found an existing license that would prevent such a thing from happening.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: onpon on October 03, 2014, 09:49:26 am
Here's an example (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1719.msg17326#msg17326) of how something like that could happen.

Uh, that's an example of that happening under the MPL, not the GNU LGPL. I'm pretty sure that the GNU LGPL doesn't allow you to link the library to a proprietary program; only the other way around (a proprietary program can link to the library).
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on October 03, 2014, 11:07:45 am
Uh, that's an example of that happening under the MPL, not the GNU LGPL. I'm pretty sure that the GNU LGPL doesn't allow you to link the library to a proprietary program; only the other way around (a proprietary program can link to the library).

I realize that MPLv2 code and LGPLv3 code don't link to proprietary code in the same way from a license point of view, but it amounts to the same outcome. Mincing words about which code is linking to which other code is a ridiculous argument. I'll just let one of Josh's earlier posts speak for itself as to why the LGPL won't work for ENIGMA. (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=1994.msg19831#msg19831) If you disagree with his interpretation of the LGPL, you can talk to him about it.

EDIT: I understand now what you were saying onpon. I misinterpreted what you meant. Please accept my apology.
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on October 03, 2014, 01:49:16 pm
Ok, first of all GPL does allow linking with what ever / however you want as long as you don't distribute it, for instance for internal use in a company without the intent to distribute.

LGPL allows linking with propietary code as long as you do it dynamically for sell or in any way for private use.

MPLv2 allows static linking while protecting your code, (MPL: The copyleft applies to any files containing MPLed code.) This means you can sell your game as long as you make sure the recipients can have access to the MPLd code contained within your game (The engine and any modification you make to it basically), so it's almost like the LGPL with a linking exception.

See for your self: https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html (https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on October 03, 2014, 10:01:24 pm
Quote from: edsquare
Ok, first of all GPL does allow linking with what ever / however you want as long as you don't distribute it, for instance for internal use in a company without the intent to distribute.
That's correct, but not relevant to this discussion. All of the proposed licenses allow for private use of the source code and compiled binaries. The primary purpose of ENIGMA is to make games that can be distributed publicly.

Quote from: edsquare
LGPL allows linking with propietary code as long as you do it dynamically for sell or in any way for private use.
That's partially correct. The LGPL allows dynamic or static linking with any type of code as long as you follow some extra rules for static linking. (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynamic)

Quote from: edsquare
MPLv2 allows static linking while protecting your code, (MPL: The copyleft applies to any files containing MPLed code.) This means you can sell your game as long as you make sure the recipients can have access to the MPLd code contained within your game (The engine and any modification you make to it basically), so it's almost like the LGPL with a linking exception.
The MPLv2 is similar to the LGPLv3 in a few ways, but it is more flexible when it comes to linking, relicensing MPL code under a GNU license (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#MPL-2.0) and distribution of a combined work.

Quote from: edsquare
See for your self: https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html (https://www.mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/FAQ.html)
I've read that FAQ a lot over the last few days. I reference it in the License Comparison table. (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2270)
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: edsquare on October 05, 2014, 10:34:40 am

So, my question is: What do you, the reader, think about someone selling proprietary features or fixes for ENIGMA's engine?

This is why I don't like the feautures/fixes way of putting it, it makes it sound as if anyone could change ENIGMA's code without sharing the changes, and this is not true; under your asumption one would have to change the code in such a way as to allow a bugfix to be developed as an extension (externally in order for me to keep the code closed). I understand how someone could do a (feature?)/extension in such a way as to keep it propietary without breaking the license, but a bug fix? It's not the same and not as easy to do so.

If ENIGMA's engine code license were changed and someone started legally selling an enhanced version of ENIGMA, would you be upset about that?

Even under the GPL you can do this, what you can't do under the GPL, LGPL or MPLv2 is to close ENIGMA's source (You would have to give any buyer the code of your enhanced ENIGMA.), besides that only the engine would be under said license while  other parts of ENIGMA would remain GPL. This has been discussed before.

What if that someone shared their bug fixes with ENIGMA, but kept the enhanced features proprietary; would that make a difference? Please discuss.

I say you're welcome to do so, you should be able to benefit economically from your work
Title: Re: Please vote for ENIGMA's new license
Post by: Rezolyze on October 07, 2014, 08:44:32 am
edsquare's post above is a reply to a post I made. Josh turned my post into a new topic and moved it here. (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2280.0)
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Rezolyze on October 20, 2014, 09:53:02 am
The poll has been reset for the reasons mentioned in the topic post. Please cast your vote again. Thanks.
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Darkstar2 on October 20, 2014, 12:13:36 pm
Too much spaghetti too much legal jargon it turns anybody off NOT to read !  Before voting, could you please provide some real world EXAMPLES, not just jargon.....

Examples how it would apply to each vote.......Such as I create a game using ENIGMA, I do this, I do that, this is allowed, this is not, using an example and not just repeating words from the license, so most of us license illiterates can better understand, because I'm pretty sure most people have at one time violated one or more licenses unintentionally, because of the long winded legal jargon that makes you dizzy ! :D

So here is a template:

I use ENIGMA to create my game.
Along with ENIGMA I use other 3rd party open source OR I use my own proprietary code that I embed inside the ENIGMA OR that I call externally...... 

Or how about this, so long as ENIGMA was not modified and integral and used to making your games, your game would not require source availability.  In other words you can license your creation as you want (without having to distribute its source) BUT mentioning ENIGMA used or not or whatever, which license would be best for that....

I recall these long debates light years ago with never-ending debates on down sides of each.
So it's always a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario.

Perhaps if there were more concrete examples of how this could apply instead of citing back the jargon, it would help the masses. :D

A lot of people violate licenses, every second, thousands of people do......How many get caught is the question......too few......how many worthwhile being perused, again good question.......point being most people don't read licenses, and if they do they are so tangled into the spaghetti and meatballs, that they don't understand a bloody thing.

When you travel and take travel insurance, do you read the 900 page policy ? who does...... DO people read the dozen page software licenses ? you know the fine print that requires 300x zooming so you can barely read ?

Yeah......Licenses indeed. :D

Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Rusky on October 20, 2014, 05:38:11 pm
Classpath exception is interesting in that it might work but would also allow ENIGMA derivatives to be full GPL, without allowing closed source games.
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on October 20, 2014, 11:07:47 pm
That much is perfectly allowable. The classpath scares me because all it says in its own self-defense is "An independent module is a module which is not derived from or based on this library." That seems incredibly easy to defeat in the context of a project as large as ENIGMA. Last time I talked about Classpath, I believe I said something to the tune of "I could have written a more convincing exception." I stand by that. That said, it's still the biggest contender among any of those licenses, though. :P
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Rusky on October 21, 2014, 01:21:39 am
I would imagine "derived from or based on this library" is intended to work the same way as the rest of the GPL. So here you may be getting into the semantically ambiguous territory of closed-source libraries for use with ENIGMA vs closed-source libraries to fix/replace ENIGMA.
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on October 21, 2014, 07:37:06 pm
That's what worries me. And that's where a lawyer would come in. Apparently, I have access to lawyers as a perk, so I'm going to see what I can do with that. I would imagine "derived from or based on this library" is intended to work the same way as the rest of the GPL. So here you may be getting into the semantically ambiguous territory of closed-source libraries for use with ENIGMA vs closed-source libraries to fix/replace ENIGMA. Waiting for SFLC has not proven fruitful....
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: The 11th plague of Egypt on October 22, 2014, 02:38:42 am
Waiting for SFLC has not proven fruitful....
Pity they didn't answer you. Seriously, I expected more from them.

In the meantime, I couldn't but notice how a little Java framework took the scenes.
http://www.badlogicgames.com/wordpress/?p=3502

It has a small community of developers, been around for a few years.
License is Apache 2, yet nobody stole it.
250k downloads a month.

Come on now.
Let's relax a bit.
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: DaCEO on October 22, 2014, 03:18:05 pm
Come on now.
Let's relax a bit.

Look at this thread for more paranoia: http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2296.0 (http://enigma-dev.org/forums/index.php?topic=2296.0)
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: lonewolff on October 22, 2014, 03:51:12 pm
How many times is the same poll needed?  :D

I know I have personally voted atleast 2 maybe 3 times on separate polls on the same thread.

Good thing you guys are not in parliament, hey? Those guys only take a few years to decide on anything. ENIGMA is now 7 years old.  ::)
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: ZackCDLVI on October 23, 2014, 11:40:16 am
Personally, MPL.
Title: Re: ENIGMA's Engine Code License - Please Vote
Post by: Darkstar2 on October 25, 2014, 08:36:12 pm
How many times is the same poll needed?  :D

I know I have personally voted atleast 2 maybe 3 times on separate polls on the same thread.

Good thing you guys are not in parliament, hey? Those guys only take a few years to decide on anything. ENIGMA is now 7 years old.  ::)

LOL good observation ! though they are deciding on far bigger issues whilst using your tax dollars to good use :P

The license issue is a big vicious circle

ENIGMA devs want protection !
BUT
end-users don't want to have to release their source and too want protection

Damned if you do damned if you don't
waste of bloody time.
I guess now people are riding on the fact of the unlikelihood anybody will get sued :D

Don't forget to check this topic every few years, yes ? , and cast your vote.  Cheers :D