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Choosing an open source license for a game engine!

Daniel Billings · 2016-01-28T21:11:01

I need help selecting an open source license to use for an engine I'm working on, I want something like the GPL, but my concern is that the GPL will force game assets for games made on the engine to be GPL as well, game assets in this case would include scripts from the scripting engine I plan on using, to complicate matters I'm using a number of libraries that, for all intents and purposes use the zlib license. Is there a license I can use that would require anyone making alterations to the c++ source code to release those alterations under the same open source license, without requiring that a game made on the engine open source all of its art/sound/AngelScript code? I'm not against simply using a permissive license, but I'd rather not "roll my own", perhaps I'm misunderstanding the scope of a "derived work" under GPL. For those curious, this will be a 2D engine that acts as a wrapper (of varying thicknesses) over SFML, and Box2D. A game made on the engine will consist of the usual game assets, and AngelScript code to initialize the engine and define game object behavior by registering callbacks and the like. A long-term goal is to also make a 3D version utilizing Bullet and OpenGL for rendering as SFML only handles 2D directly. Pretty standard fare really, and very similar to Torque2D aside from the scripting language choice... This is as much an academic exercise as anything, and open sourcing it seemed like a good way to encourage future me to keep the codebase lean and clean.

Games Business and Law Business

Started by Felps January 22, 2016 06:38 AM

9 comments, last by Hodgman 8 years, 5 months ago

Hodgman

52,718

January 28, 2016 09:11 PM

GPL is a big no-no for game development. Even if the big game developpers were not so secretive about their game engines, the fact that the GPL would force the full game to be GPL'd as well would be a nightmare for multi-player online games, because cheating would be stupidly easy. To make matters worse, I think the GPLv3 would forbid the detection and banning of modded executables from online networks so you wouldn't even be able to impose a fair online environment.

No, it doesn't.
Now, there are plenty of valid reasons to avoid the GPL like the plague, but they all relate to the viral nature of the license with respect to code, and to issues with linking to libraries that may be covered by other, incompatible licenses, but the reason you cite is not a valid reason: it's not even a reason at all, because it's false.

Hold your horses; it's pretty safe to assume that he was talking about the code, not the content. Always assume good faith.
Using a GPL engine forces your game code to become GPL.

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