I Have A Question for Celeron55

[TheNearSightedWalrus]

Hello!

My name is Matthew, and while I am open to answers from others, I would like to specifically address this post to Celeron55 as the creator of the game. I thought to PM him first, but as a brand new member it looks like I’m not allowed to do that.

To Celeron55: I recently stumbled upon your open source game Minetest. first of all, thank you, and well done to you, and whoever else has contributed to this really great project! You guys have done a beautiful job here.

I am starting to learn coding, and all the other aspects of game development in the pursuit of creating simple games quickly as a hobby in my spare time, and selling them for some income on the side to support my family and compensate for the time that I’ve spent. In my pursuit of open source voxel engines, I came across Minetest, and ever since then I have been doing EXTENSIVE research into Minetest, and the restrictions and allowances of the LGPL 2.1. After all of my research, I still can’t say I fully understand what exactly the license allows and doesn’t allow. So instead of going off Internet advice, or assuming that I understood the license and potentially making a big mess of things, I felt that the most honoring thing to do and the safest thing legally to do would be to ask the creators of the engine directly how they interpret the license.

I’d like to know your interpretation of the license because I am interested in exploring the possibility of creating a mod from scratch for Minetest that I could sell, without having to license the mod itself under the LGPL. in the event that I had to make any changes to the engine itself, I will redistribute the engine and it’s source code changes under the LGPL.

Let me restate some of what I’ve said here, and state a few new things to make my intentions absolutely clear so we have absolutely no misunderstanding :

I WILL NOT steal Minetest.
I WILL NOT modify any minetest, or minetest game code and claim any of it as my own, or attempt to release it as proprietary.
I WILL NOT use any art, or assets from Minetest, Minetest game, or any other mods.
I WILL build all of my assets, and code(with the exception of the modding API used as necessary to create a mod), from scratch.



If I did make changes to the engine, the game, or any other code or assets that did not belong to me, I would follow TO THE LETTER what ever license restrictions/allowances that were given for that specific file, or collection of files, and ask permission from the author(s) before use.

I also understand from my research that if I did not allow people to freely copy, distribute, and otherwise modify my mod, that it would be banned from the community forum. I completely understand and respect that, and will honor that by not attempting to post it here.

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at this, and I hope I’ve made myself clear in that I have no desire to steal, or take credit for anything you have done, but I’m merely desiring to create a mod for this engine for fun, and be compensated for the work I put into it, because everyone’s time is worth something, and everyone deserves the opportunity to make all or some of their living doing something they love.

Again, thank you - Matthew

[rubenwardy]

It's perfectly fine to sell mods. It's perfectly legal to make closed source mods too.

However it's very unlikely that someone would buy any mods you made, as this community is based around open source and doesn't tend to shell out for software.

celeron55 probably won't care to answer this, he doesn't check the forums that much. It's also worth noting that he's not the only owner of the Minetest code (about 8% of the Minetest source code was last edited by me as an interesting measure). If you still want to contact him, email him at his gmail address.

because everyone’s time is worth something, and everyone deserves the opportunity to make all or some of their living doing something they love.

I've made exactly £0 from Minetest in my 5 and a half years of modding, engine development, and other contributions. It's sometimes nice to have a hobby.

[TheNearSightedWalrus]

Thank you so much for your full, kind, and quick response!

[Stix]

I personally think your best bet for selling your creations would be to make entirely new fun small games based upon the minetest engine or something, like some 2d games where you explore complete quests and craft or something.

[Wuzzy]

I WILL NOT steal Minetest.
I WILL NOT modify any minetest, or minetest game code and claim any of it as my own, or attempt to release it as proprietary.
I WILL NOT use any art, or assets from Minetest, Minetest game, or any other mods.
I WILL build all of my assets, and code(with the exception of the modding API used as necessary to create a mod), from scratch.

IANAL. But:
Well, in this case it's pretty clear that all of this is perfectly legal. There's no need to wait for celeron55's response. Go on and create something great! :-)

If you give credit where credit is due, don't include proprietary stuff and keep the LGPL as the license, you're pretty safe.

Note that some of your self-inflicted restrictions are not required to obey.
It is perfectly okay to re-use or re-release any of the media, to edit it and to re-release your edits of Minetest and Minetest Game. This applies to ALL of Minetest and Minetest Game, not just some random parts of it. For mods, look at the license of the specific mod. Almost all mods here are free software. Proprietary mods are very rare and generally frowned upon. I usually complain a lot when I spot one. ;-)
If you really want to draw everything from scratch, that's of course your free choice.

By the way, I don't think it is even possible to steal Minetest since it has been free to begin with. ;-)

More more advice regarding GNU licenses like the GNU LGPL, see:
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq

The point of having free software licenses (like the GNU LGPL) is 1) freedom and 2) the copyright holders don't need to be asked for permission explicitly every single time (see also: http://blog.ninapaley.com/2011/04/20/yes-means-yes/).

[Linuxdirk]

Well, in this case it's pretty clear that all of this is perfectly legal.

Or isn’t it?

The code of both the Minetest Engine and Minetest Game are licensed under LGPL 2.1+ free software license.

Mods can be seen as “work that uses the Library” and even if “Such a work, in isolation, is not a derivative work of the Library, and therefore falls outside the scope of this License.” it is debatable if API calls fall under the LGPL and thus the calling application has to be open source and the the sections 5-7 could be applicable to some degree.

Interesting discussion about the specific case (nonfree code that uses the API of an open-source project) here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/139 ... pplication

[Wuzzy]

Well, then just don't make proprietary mods. It's the more ethical thing to do anyway. :-)

[Linuxdirk]

Well, then just don't make proprietary mods. It's the more ethical thing to do anyway. :-)

Of course it is.

It’s perfectly fine to get paid for updates and support though (that’s how commercial Linux distributions make money).