Horde3D

That's a problem with the GPL - making themselves incompatible with the rest of the world...Fixes/improvements to the Horde core have to be contributed back to the project IIRC -- private additions have to be done through the provided interface.No serious games companies will support a GPL engine -- keeping the source code of their game private is very important (at least for the first few months/years to ensure sales). The EPL makes a compromise where they have to publish their source for Horde3D, but they can keep the source of the rest of their game private.
Without this compromise, it is very unlikely that Horde will ever appear in a commercial game project.

You can't patent something that's already been invented -- someone can't take a part of the existing Horde code and put a patent on it to stop us from using it.
As above, if they make additions to the core of Horde3D, then they have to share that source.
Static vs Dynamic linking is a big problem for video games -- not all platforms even support dynamic linking!!As above, if you use and modify horde, you do have to provide access to your modifications.What about companies that profit from GPL software, like Novell or Sun Microsystems? They take all your hard work and profit from it without recognising your contribution.... so does that mean you should give up on GPL software?

It's a really, really good thing if a big company uses horde for their own products (and makes money off our work)... Why? Because they have talented professional programmers on their pay-roll -- programmers who will be paid to work with Horde3D, and who will be forced to release their improvements back to us for free!

That might be a problem indeed, I didn't developed under other platforms so thanks for clarification.


Not really, they tried very hard to be compatible with EPL while making [L]GPLv3. Eclipse rejected their effort though. Exceptions makes this license very flexible. Maybe exceptions might be even capable in making compatibility with mentioned other gaming platforms, I don't remember.


I assumed you understand that I've been talking about BSD-like licenses. EPL is almost sufficient license (for me).[/quote]
The thing is: someone is developing code (by himself), patent it and insert into Horde3D tree. Because You can't track each new patent, code is accepted and being used by 'their competition'. After 'competitor' publish their product, they suing him by violating patent. The other less aggresive scenario might be to put new patents on most their code. Then, announce
charges for using their part after it will be integral part of Horde3D.

I'm not accusing anyone for being such an ass, but we shouldn't let this possibility exist even in theory, should we?




I know that their business model is based on source being closed. It's very big waste of human resources though, but we both agree with that, so I won't dive into. You say that they will contribute to horde3d anyway, and make their other components private which satisfies You. It's still waste of energy, but I agree - it's not bad situation. As You said they have talented programmers and their contributions will aid Horde3D community a lot.

There is other scenario that I'm scared to. They wont work on horde3d at all, maybe fix few bugs, and make external wrappers for private engine-related functionality. It doesn't make me feel good because in the same time good GPL'ed software would persuaded them it's worth making their work public too, help other Horde3D authors and having really good product in the same time. They don't have to sell licenses on program itself. Everything is all about business model that won't support this horrible reinventing the wheel. I'd like to tell You concrete ideas which are suited to game-develop but it would ruin my chances (without all this big money). Altough they can make their own, by choosing EPL over GPL You're contributing to sustained reinventing the wheel model. Even if You think I'm wrong, the thing hurts me most is by choosing EPL over LGPL You're not giving any chance to prove that complete code openness might be way to make good money (we agree about better product, dont we?) too.

Note that GPL + linking exception would fix quite some of these "problems" - the license is nearly identical to the EPL in terms of effects I think. Take Intel TBB or the gnu libc as examples which use it

Does not work the other way round though, as GPL + linking exception only applies to libraries.

I just talked with marciano about those issues. We thought that dual licensing EPL/LGPL like e.g. http://logback.qos.ch/license.html does it, may be an option. As already mentioned by Codepoet some pages before, the only problem is with contributions from the community. As most of us, I'm not a lawyer, but I think if we would integrate some things from other projects, the contribution has to be integrated also under the dual licensing option. So every user of the merged Horde3D version can choose between EPL and LGPL. If that's not feasible for the contributer, the work won't be integrated into the official trunk.

Does anyone see a reason why this shouldn't be a solution?

The issue is still with extensions. Any closed-source extensions can only be distributed against the EPL version, and any GPL extensions can only be used against the LGPL version, so a project must choose at the outset whether they wish to use only closed-source or only GPL/LGPL extensions.

If Horde already had a vibrant community I don't think this would be much of a problem, but at its present size, the community isn't really large enough to split down the middle.

This may also not be a concern for the general users of Horde, but I personally wouldn't touch GPL/LGPL middleware (unless under classpath exception) for a commercial venture.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

I think closed source extensions won't be released at all. And if they would be released under the EPL only they won't be integrated into the official Horde repository. So if the extension should be integrated it must be under the dual licensing option as Horde is released and therefore everyone can decide again if he/she wants to use EPL or GPL. In GPL projects all parts of Horde including the Extensions can be used under the LGPL. In EPL or closed projects all parts can be used under the EPL.

Did I miss something?

Yes. I am saying that in a single project, you have to choose whether to use extensions which are EPL-compatible, or extensions which are GPL-compatible, but you can't use both.

Obviously any extensions included with the engine (i.e. the Terrain extension) will also be dual-licensed, so those wont be a problem. But 3rd-party extensions that use either the EPL or the GPL will be mutually exclusive, and can't be used both in the same project.

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

Yeah of course, but using the EPL only would exclude the whole Horde project from all GPL projects, while otherwise only extensions which does not conform to your personal choice can't be used within your project. But I don't see that as a problem, because that's the case for all software libraries we may want to use in Horde, but do not allow usage in either EPL or GPL projects. And we can publish all extensions wether they are EPL only or GPL only in the community branch, where most extension will be published anyway. And if someone developes a project, he has to choose what extensions are allowed to be used for his personal license. If someone demands that his extension will only be used in GPL projects I would be happier to have it released under that license instead of not releasing anything because Horde is not allowed to be used in GPL projects.

Personally I think the EPL does fit perfectly to the needs of most software projects (although software patents may be a problem, but I think they are not allowed in Germany anyway), but it seems that many people prefer GPL over EPL and it would be a pity if those people can't use Horde because we do have a license that does not allow that.