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So I am considering side games to add my main games. Mini games I guess they are called. I thought it might be fun to have random chessboards in game you can actually play. I wanted to actually have a decent chess engine behind the game. Off the bat I found a GPL one. I think it is designed to be communicated externally. So what does that mean for using it in my game? If I communicate to an external process is this violating GPL? I have no intention of making my game open source. Well it seems this use case is very nuanced:
https://opensource.stackexchange.com/...
The consensus on a lot of these discussions is the scope of the use of the program. Are you bundling for convenience or bundling for intrinsic utility? This is fascinating because using a compiler on a Windows platform could be a possibly violation. That is a proprietary program calling a GPL one. This is actually handled in the GPL as far as I know. So, if I use a GPL engine as a mini game is that the same as a full blown chess game? What if I support 10 different engines in a full blown chess game?
Now to play devil's advocate even further. Are proprietary phone apps that communicate to GPL software that serve data intrinsically linked? The app will not function without the server or computer os the server runs on. A lot of the web tech is largely GPL or has large amount of GPL programs. Should the web code be under GPL? Should the phone app be under GPL? This sounds ridiculous to some degree. But is that the same as bundling a GPL app and communicating to it from the program via network or command line? The phone app depends upon this software.
Now to protect myself I will find a decent chess engine that is either LGPL or something more permissive. I just don't want the hassle. I might make the chess engine use a parameter in case someone else might want a better engine they want to add though. At that point it is the user adding it. Maybe the fact that it would not be the only game in town is a factor as well.
I am also considering bundling python as a whole to get access to better AI tools (python is pretty small compared to game assets). It seems everything is python when it comes to AI. The licensing there is much better though. I would love to play with NLP for commanding npcs.
I am not discussing linking at all, btw.3 -
I am on a forum that is mainly professional developers. The forum is specific to one library that is owned by the company that runs the forum. The participants are mainly volunteers as the project is open source. Most of the time it is great place to exchange experiences and help new comers to the library. However lately there has been a rash of shit posts about needing help with shit unrelated to the library.
I get it on some level, but come on people try to understand what the forum is about first. Don't bring your OS and hardware issues that have nothing to do with the library. Also, go fucking read the GPL/LGPL and any other license you have questions about. Seriously, if you want to be a developer you need to at least have an idea of what you can and cannot do. Software is an IP field. Learn what IP is and the rules to follow.
I was feeling like a jerk yesterday and started giving bogus answers to obviously unrelated questions. I know, not very pro like, but come on people! The guy was asking about monitor resolutions and changes since he updated his window manager. It was his first post on the forum. He was kind of sassy too. At least my state of mind at the time interpreted it that way...1 -
The way I understand software licenses.
Cool bro MIT: Free to do whatever you want as long as you include a copy of the license and you can't hold the original accountable.
fair dude Apache 2.0: Like the MIT license but more bureaucratic and few more minor things you need to keep track of.
scumbag GPL: free as in the same way that prison food is free. used by java in gotcha cases as a source of revenue because no one understands java licensing. Often used in the form of a deterrent so you never dare to open up the github page.
scumbag GPL who, realising they have no friends, becomes slightly less of a dick LGPL: But please stop using this and use our more restrictive "freedom" license.
I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.13 -
In retrospection to the uproar about Qt tightening its license in a move against probably its biggest user (KDE), what do you think KDE should do from now on? Should they just trust Qt? Should they take measures? Should they fork Qt? Or, in a moment of utter madness, nuke everything and go Gtk?
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If I have a project wich use AGPL and LGPL Libraries at the same time, my project must to adopt AGPL or LGPL, I'm so confused.1
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I went to create an attributions page for my node.js app I am working on. I just had it parse the packages used. Ran out of memory trying to display them in a browser.
Man I included 1 (uno) package and the dependencies are crazy. First thing I did was install license-checker to make sure I wasn't shooting myself in the foot with some random GPL/LGPL package.
So, I guess I am learning about node.js a bit this week.
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