Licenses and .exe Distribution Question (BMax)
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/Licenses and .exe Distribution Question (BMax)
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| Hi all... BlitzMax includes documentation for the following licenses: bssc,ftl,glx,oggvorbis,sgi and zlibpng. I have read the licenses, but remain uncertain about what they exactly mean (i.e. I'm not sure if I can distribute my .exe file created with Blitz Max). Are these licenses primarily for source code mods and distribution? ...or does anyone know if they also apply to the .exe files created with Blitz Max? Perhaps this is not an appropriate question for this forum, but any input based on other peoples experience with .exe distribution (both commercial/non-commercial) appreciated. I realize my next step may be consultation with an Atty prior to distribution... Thanks, Tim |
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| zlibpng is obviously zlib license which is very loose and opensource. http://opensource.org/licenses/Zlib |
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| BSSC is redundant; with the full open-source release of BlitzMax under zlib, it doesn't cover anything any more (actually I think it stopped being relevant a while before that since it was mainly for the mods, and they were open-sourced earlier). The FTL says "We specifically permit and encourage the inclusion of this software, with or without modifications, in commercial products", which should answer your question for that one. In section 2 it says you must acknowledge or credit them somehow. Put FreeType in your credits along with the other resources you used. The GLX licence should only be relevant (IIUC) for Linux distributions of your program. Section 3 explains what you need to do: just copy the licence into your program's documentation and you're good to go. The oggvorbis licence is only a placeholder. Whoops, BRL are doing something wrong there. Regardless, same applies. Perhaps find a complete version of the licence to copy over though. SGI is fundamentally the same as GLX but not limited to Linux. Copy the licence to your program docs (or a better-formatted one if you can find it). zlib/libpng imposes no requirements upon binary distributions of your program, except that you not lie about the bits you didn't write (which is the case for all work: not even the public domain gives you the right to claim to have written things you didn't). They don't even require a mention in the credits, although you should because that's just the decent thing. TL;DR: I'm not sure if I can distribute my .exe file created with Blitz Max You can. That's what it's for. Copy all licences (except BSSC) to your docs folder and put all the libraries you used in your credits, and you've fulfilled all your licensing obligations. You can then charge as much as you like, or distribute the app as freeware. You can impose whatever additional restrictions (i.e. "plz don't pirate kthx") you like. Since none of these licences apply to things you'd normally consider "part of" your program's source, none of it needs to apply at all to a source-only distribution, if you wanted to go that route as well. |
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| RustyKristi and Yasha, Just wanted to post a quick thanks for your responses. I do realize that the purpose of a .exe file is to distribute the compiled /linked program, but one must be careful because when I use MS Visual Studio to compile C# and C++ programs, the license does NOT allow me to distribute because they are the free versions. I use other compilers/linkers for anything I am going to distribute to assure things are legal. I found the BMax licenses a bit confusing though, so I really appreciate your input. I'll continue to monitor the thread for other responses... Tim |
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