3 ms·

Ironically the license (GPL) is one of the biggest show stoppers for BGE to get taken seriously. I feel like building the engine in to blender is not very viab

Ironically the license (GPL) is one of the biggest show stoppers for BGE to get taken seriously. I feel like building the engine in to blender is not very viable because of the GPL license, but using Blender as a game editor is not a bad idea at all - so if you're going to do an OSS game engine I think the best solution would be to start with a more permissive license (eg. MIT or something like that) and not have any dependencies on blender in the actual engine, instead the blender integration code should be strictly separate, that part would be covered by GPL, but the engine core would still remain MIT as it's not derived from GPL code, so you could distribute your game without releasing the source.

slimsag 10y ago
I'm sorry, but this is just not true. You do not need to release your source code or assets for a commercial game. According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately. You would have a (GPL) small python script which loads your (commercial, closed source) blend file containing all of your artwork and Python code. [1] https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#standalone-games https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#st...
- flamedoge 10y ago
  u realize blend file isn't encrypted or obfuscated?
  - geon 10y ago
    Obfuscation doesn't work for copy protection anyway.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately That's simply wrong - your scripts use GPL APIs - this means your code is derived from GPL - if you could just ship stuff that uses GPL at run-time without being affected LGPL would not exist. And even if that's how they interpret the license this still means you can't ship smartphone apps.
  - thomastjeffery 10y ago
    Clearly you don't understand the GPL. A derivative of the APIs themselves would need to be licensed with the GPL, but calling the APIs would definitely not. Any content you make using blender is not restricted by the GPL (or any other license). Only blender itself is.
    - rubber_duck 10y ago
      >but calling the APIs would definitely not. Why does LGPL exist then ? You're saying you can dynamically link to GPL content from say a scripting language and distribute the GPL stuff separately and you would not be affected by GPL. This is not how I've seen people interpret GPL and is clearly against the spirit of the license. LGPL is meant to cover that use case explicitly.

slimsag 10y ago

I'm sorry, but this is just not true. You do not need to release your source code or assets for a commercial game. According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately. You would have a (GPL) small python script which loads your (commercial, closed source) blend file containing all of your artwork and Python code. [1] https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#standalone-games https://www.blender.org/manual/game_engine/licensing.html#st...

flamedoge 10y ago
u realize blend file isn't encrypted or obfuscated?
- geon 10y ago
  Obfuscation doesn't work for copy protection anyway.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
rubber_duck 10y ago
>According to the licensing page[1], you just need to distribute your executable and core .blend file separately That's simply wrong - your scripts use GPL APIs - this means your code is derived from GPL - if you could just ship stuff that uses GPL at run-time without being affected LGPL would not exist. And even if that's how they interpret the license this still means you can't ship smartphone apps.
- thomastjeffery 10y ago
  Clearly you don't understand the GPL. A derivative of the APIs themselves would need to be licensed with the GPL, but calling the APIs would definitely not. Any content you make using blender is not restricted by the GPL (or any other license). Only blender itself is.
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    >but calling the APIs would definitely not. Why does LGPL exist then ? You're saying you can dynamically link to GPL content from say a scripting language and distribute the GPL stuff separately and you would not be affected by GPL. This is not how I've seen people interpret GPL and is clearly against the spirit of the license. LGPL is meant to cover that use case explicitly.