Change licensing to minetest?

[afflatus]

I think the fundamental problem here is that you neither understand nor appreciate the principles of Open Source / Free Software Tarmik. It is far from a religious thing, in fact it's a pretty hard-headed and practical approach to enshrining freedoms.

[Evergreen]

Might I suggest that a moderator lock this topic? I don't think discussing further will lead to anything productive.

[Tarmik]

So, what is your problem with the license of minetest?

(1) Let's take an example. I have made support for joystick in my own commercial software. In theory I could integrate that joystick driver in minetest (may be you support it already, but just to get the idea), but this narrows into question whether company for which I work for will allow this. And I suspect it wont. Now.... I could do this vice versa - develop on my free time joystick driver and embedd into minetest. Now... I would like to pick up that h/cpp code and embed it into commercial software - but LGPL will probably not allow this. (Or will it ?) - since code became part of minetest already.

Could I license joystick.h/cpp with MIT license and place it whereever I want or even with LGPL.
So minetest with LGPL and joystick driver with LGPL, both narrowed to specific module part.

This is about basic modularity.

(2) But also about minetest as 3d rendering engine. What if I would like to upgrade it to my own 3d rendering engine, used for example for other cases besides gaming - I still would need to open up source codes of my own modifications, isn't ? That custom 3d engine cannot be exactly sold, since anyone can start competing with me - just by using my own source codes against me.

This is about branching your code and turning it into commercial product.

I'm bit surprised how many angry posts I see here.

It might be that eventually open source code will win, since engine is developed by volunteers, that's free software developers. Why to hire someone, when we have a lot of volunteers working in this software.

Can you give a proposal of how you see LGPL licensed software development in commercial approach, taking into account that company would stay alive more than 1 year.

[indriApollo]

You are the one who keeps bringing profit and a company upfront. Minetest has a clear licence and contribution policy. If you don't want to comply, then leave. I think everyone here expressed his objection to your ideas, so ther's nothing more to discuss.

[Casimir]

What if I would like to upgrade it to my own 3d rendering engine, used for example for other cases besides gaming - I still would need to open up source codes of my own modifications, isn't ?

That's the very idea behind that license. That's why it was chosen. If you don't like it then don't use free software, go to Mojang and discuss with them.

[maikerumine]

So, what is your problem with the license of minetest?

SNIPPY SNIP....

What part of "Not interested", do you not understand, Tarmik? Please let the licensing thing go.

[addi]

(1) Let's take an example. I have made support for joystick in my own commercial software. In theory I could integrate that joystick driver in minetest (may be you support it already, but just to get the idea), but this narrows into question whether company for which I work for will allow this. And I suspect it wont. Now.... I could do this vice versa - develop on my free time joystick driver and embedd into minetest. Now... I would like to pick up that h/cpp code and embed it into commercial software - but LGPL will probably not allow this. (Or will it ?) - since code became part of minetest already.

Could I license joystick.h/cpp with MIT license and place it whereever I want or even with LGPL.
So minetest with LGPL and joystick driver with LGPL, both narrowed to specific module part.

I try to answer it using the german law (not shure about the law of other countries)

so you wrote the code of the joistic file, so you are the author. You have the only copyright ©Tarmik until 60 years after your death.
You can do whatever you want to do with that.
That other people can use, modify, and share it, it have to be under a open license.
for example the code have to be LGPL for minetest.
Now your code wich is used in Minetest is LGPL, but you are the author of it. If you decide to share that code under MIT license than just share it.
If you want to to sell that code, just do it. you are the author, you have all rights.
But you have not longer the right to change the licence of the code wich is already in Minetest. This is licensed as LGPL.
But with a copy of that code you can do whatever you want.

(2) But also about minetest as 3d rendering engine. What if I would like to upgrade it to my own 3d rendering engine, used for example for other cases besides gaming - I still would need to open up source codes of my own modifications, isn't ?

true

That custom 3d engine cannot be exactly sold, since anyone can start competing with me - just by using my own source codes against me.

not shure about it, here you have to read the LGPL exactly.
as far i know, you can sell it, but you have to make the sourcecode public. And you have to show the orginal authors. And, And And.
you should read and understand the terms of LGPL exactly.
---
no waranty for correctnes. may only work with german law

[afflatus]

Tarmik, you're getting angry responses because the issues you raise are general issues with Open Source and not really specific to Minetest. Please study the actual wording of GPL and LGPL, read a bit of Richard Stallman and understand that not everyone in the movement shares his viewpoint. Read Eric Raymond's "The Cathedral and The Bazaar" to compare. Many of the issues you raise are covered in the latter.

The freedom to make a fork of the code and hack on it is the reason most of this game's developers and players are here. You are challenging a freedom we have fought and worked hard for. That freedom does include commercial use but not proprietisation.

Because we are all volunteers we do get a bit frustrated with people who don't appear to have read the instructions properly. Perhaps we could be a little more patient with people who are obviously new to all this, but we are also human beings with emotions.

You have basically started at chapter 3 and suggested that the hero shouldn't be trying to kill the villain.

[rubenwardy]

You don't need to make the source public, only to the customers or users of your modified version. Selling copies isn't the only business model you can use, although it is the most tested one. Make your own game if you want to make money through proprietary code.

I agree that users being able to legally distribute copies of your game to people that haven't bought it is a problem of FLOSS. (Freely Licenced) But yet again, that isn't the point of this game.

Also, probably a typo, but Irrlicht is the 3d rendering engine, Minetest is a game engine and Minetest is a game.

[twoelk]

indeed I think that this very well is an important subject and I fear this horse is very vital no matter how hard the beating. (I really like that picture though)

It may have become clear that there is great fear of somebody trying to steal the code and make it closed source. So no matter what the license says people are very hostile to anything that endangers the opensource and free status of this game.
As a matter of fact even taking money for anything having to do with Minetest is frowned upon by most.

So thinking about that joystick driver example here is a suggestion how that may work. Of course anybody can offer some copyrighted content to be used with Minetest. I could sell some texture pack and dissallow any usage with it that is not paid for. People could use it in their client or I could use it on a public server and I could forbid them to post pictures that show it in usage. Not what I would think nice but absolutely allowed. In fact we do have and had some servers that had content that was restricted to these servers and it was not allowed to use it otherwise, be it special mods, textures or other content. Although sharing pictures was never restricted.

So back to that joystick driver, you could design a plugin api and request it to be added to the core. This api would have to be open source of course but the plugins/drivers you then design need not be so. So you would supply and donate an open source api anybody can use and write content for, be it open source or whatever. You could then supply closed source content to use that api. That content could of course not be bundled with Minetest as it is understood now but you might be allowed to point to your extra plugin/library/driver that could be downloaded elsewhere and used alongside Minetest by those interested.

Using the game engine of Minetest as basis for a closed source project is probably, if not a break of the license at the minimum considered unethical and a slap in the face of the community ...
but writing a new client from scratch that can connect to a Minetest server should be perfectly possible and may be not frowned upon as much and as far as I know the Irrlicht 3D engine library allows usage in a proprietary project as well.
Just as writing any software that can read and write to Minetest maps is not restricted to any license as far as I know.

So although the community may react very harsh to anything in the direction of turning any part of the existing Minetest system into a closed source project I would assume it should not be any problem to offer any closed source content that can connect to Minetest or plugin into it. Do keep in mind though that such content cannot be officially bundled with Minetest or hosted on it's websites.

[Linuxdirk]

indeed I think that this very well is an important subject and I fear this horse is very vital no matter how hard the beating. (I really like that picture though)

If you can’t ride a dead horse you can at least make it pull something?

So although the community may react very harsh to anything in the direction of turning any part of the existing Minetest system into a closed source project I would assume it should not be any problem to offer any closed source content that can connect to Minetest or plugin into it. Do keep in mind though that such content cannot be officially bundled with Minetest or hosted on it's websites.

Then please do it. Don’t use any open projects whose license forbid using it in closed-source projects and either host it on a website that allows you hosting proprietary closed-source software or host it on your own website.

But please desist from turning open source projects to closed source projects because open source does not fit your needs.

[Napiophelios]

sensitivity reveals inferiority

[solars]

(1) Let's take an example. I have made support for joystick in my own commercial software. In theory I could integrate that joystick driver in minetest (may be you support it already, but just to get the idea), but this narrows into question whether company for which I work for will allow this. And I suspect it wont.

If you made it for a company, is the code yours or from the company?
If the copyright by the company, you can't put it in other software. That has nothing to do with the license of the other software. It has to do with the software you wrote for others.

Now.... I could do this vice versa - develop on my free time joystick driver and embedd into minetest. Now... I would like to pick up that h/cpp code and embed it into commercial software - but LGPL will probably not allow this. (Or will it ?) - since code became part of minetest already.

No, thats wrong!
Not a single OSI license is exclusive. If the code is written only by you, you can set it under difference licenses. You can give the same code under the LGPL and a properitary license, when the properitary license don't forbid to give the license under a other license.

Could I license joystick.h/cpp with MIT license and place it whereever I want or even with LGPL. So minetest with LGPL and joystick driver with LGPL, both narrowed to specific module part.

You can dual license the file with the MIT license and the LGPL. If you license the file only with the MIT license, everybody can relicense it under the GPL. The MIT license is GPL compatible. If the MIT license LGPL compatible, I havn't looked yet.

This is about basic modularity.

You havn't understand the OSI licenses. Have you ever read them yet?

(2) But also about minetest as 3d rendering engine. What if I would like to upgrade it to my own 3d rendering engine, used for example for other cases besides gaming - I still would need to open up source codes of my own modifications, isn't ? That custom 3d engine cannot be exactly sold, since anyone can start competing with me - just by using my own source codes against me.

Against you? You will steal the code of others and use it against them. And If they not allow this, you mean it is against you? Thats ill!

This is about branching your code and turning it into commercial product.

You can do this with your own code. But what you mean is: Steal the code of others and make a commercial product of it. Search for programmes with the BSDL. The BSDL allow you do put the code in properitary Software. Many open source code from BSD is used in MS Windows and the most from OS X is from BSD.

But many programmer of open source don't want their code stolen, so they use the GPL.

I'm bit surprised how many angry posts I see here.

If you say: I don't want give you anything, please give me all what you do. You will get angry posts. Thats logical.

Can you give a proposal of how you see LGPL licensed software development in commercial approach, taking into account that company would stay alive more than 1 year.

Like the Qt Company?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_Company

Most companies uses the GPL, the BSDL or the Apache License. And many big companies use the open source licenses only for a few projects. As sample Microsoft: GPL for the Linux development, Apache License for the .NET Compiler Platform and BSDL for the ASP.NET Ajax Control Toolkit.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/openness ... x#projects

Other companies are producing hardware and give open source software. As sample Intel.
https://01.org

Many companies produce open source software...

[Kilarin]

He's trolling you folks. Don't feed the trolls.

[jbb]

I think minetest have to be open-source. If it wouldnt be , it wouldn't aviable on debian servers because there is only opensource stuff. It would be like on windows with downloading an italler from a website.
nonono not closed source.
I only want to play free and open-source games.

[stormchaser3000]

i am often sceptical of proprietary projects because there is often in proprietary projects stuff that i do not want and cannot edit out because of a !@#$ed closed source code. but seeing minetest relicenced to GPLv3 would be nice. lgpl seems to be a library licence. but minetest is more of a game engine and although that arguably is or could be considered a library. GPLv3 i find suitable for games.

[Exilyth]

A bazaar and a cathedral are completely different things.

If you do not know the analogy, go read http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathe ... al-bazaar/

[Inocudom]

A bazaar and a cathedral are completely different things.

If you do not know the analogy, go read http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathe ... al-bazaar/

Just to let everyone know, this is not an advertisement. The link that is here leads to a writing about open-source software, namely Linux.

[Ferk]

Actually, since minetest is LGPL and most of the game logic happens on the server, it would be perfectly legal to have a closed source game server even if it used privatelly modified LGPL code without releasing any source code.

As long as you don't distribute any of the software that runs on the server to anybody else you wouldn't be forced to distribute the source code as well. Only the AGPL covers that particular case.

[Exilyth]

A bazaar and a cathedral are completely different things.

If you do not know the analogy, go read http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathe ... al-bazaar/

Just to let everyone know, this is not an advertisement. The link that is here leads to a writing about open-source software, namely Linux.

Sorry, I should have added a short explanation.

[kaeza]

Post locked for obvious reasons.

Feel free to request an unlock or fork of interesting convo to a moderator.