Bringing 3D Game Design To Kids

[Gavin McCullagh]

Hi,

On Sat, 09 Feb 2008, Miriam Ruiz wrote:

> 2008/2/6, Gavin McCullagh <gmccullagh at gmail.com>:

> > GPL software needs to be forkable, without proper credit.  That
> > may seem hard to fathom, but this is an argument that has been had by
> > countless people over a very long period of time (the most high profile,
> > recent argument is perhaps the one between the XFree86 guys and the "GPL"
> > people which included almost every linux distribution).
> 
> GPLed software requires you to give proper credit for whatever part of
> the program you have made. You have to keep the copyright statements
> in the program.

Quite right.  My use of the term "proper credit" was silly as each license
defines what proper credit is.  Source code copyright is retained by the
original author.  However, one can fork GPL code, change it's name and most
users wouldn't necessarily realise.  To some people (such as the Xfree86
guys) that might not constitute "proper credit".

> In any case, GPL is not the only free license that could be used, and
> different licenses have really different requirements.

Indeed, although a fair number of the other licenses (such as the BSD ones)
would involve even greater "relaxation" by the author.

> > If I understand correctly, the GPL says that if you distribute a piece of
> > software like a library under the GPL and someone else links against it, if
> > they make changes to your software, they'll have to distribute those
> > changes under the GPL too, so you will get back their improvements to your
> > software.  If their software is statically linked against yours they must
> > distribute their software under the GPL too.
> 
> It seems to me that you might be referring to LGPL instead. If you
> link to GPL code dynamically, you have to distribute your own code
> with a GPL compatible license too, not only if you do statically.

No, I was referring to GPL, but I was wrong :-)

Thanks for the corrections,
Gavin