I was reading something on a site about the GPL license. It said that because of the license anything we make in Blender has to have the .blend file made public even if we use it commercially. Is this true or just ignorant writing? I’ve read through the license a few times and can’t find it anywhere. Thanks.
No, you misunderstand. You own the copyright to any artwork you create with blender to do with as you wish.
The GPL only comes into effect if you distribute a binary version of the blender program. If you do you are also required to make the source code available to the people you distributed the binary to.
Could tell me the web site that said this about blender, I’d like to read precisely what they said.
GreyBeard
With that logic, every program that runs on linux would have to include the source code and couldn’t be sold.
Wrong, every GPL or GPL2 program that runs on linux has to have the source code destributed for free on the internet, and in deed it does. every distrobution of linux has a source code cd that contains all the source code for every linux program that is included in the distro under the GPL.
With that logic, every program that runs on linux would have to include the source code and couldn’t be sold.
Every GPL’ed program has to have to source code made available to those you distribute the binary to. In the open source world you usually pay for support not the program itself. You can still write a program and not release it under the gpl and run it in linux. Just make sure you don’t use any gpl’ed code when you write your program. I have the source code to every program running on my linux box available to me (and that includes blender).
There are non-gpl applications for linux ie: maya, vmware, matlab, mathematica etc. These programs are not released under the gpl and do not contain any gpl’ed code. Linking to some linux libraries is allowed because those libraries are released under a different licence which allows for linking (lgpl).
The data you create with a gpl’ed program is not covered by the gpl. If you write a book with open office, a gpl’ed office suite, the gpl doesn’t apply to the book.
GreyBeard
[quote=“GreyBeard”]
Linking to some linux libraries is allowed because those libraries are released under a different licence which allows for linking (lgpl).
This brings up and interesting question: what the GPL covers is the inclusion of GPL’d code in your product, e.g. when you link with GPL’d libs, right? So if I wrote a program that uses the GPL’d libxyz, could I release only the source under, say, a BSD-style license? Since I’m not distributing binaries, I’m not including any GPL code, so I can license my software however I like.
Is my logic flawed somewhere here?
If you distribute your SOURCE code, you haven’t linked to anything yet – you are free to do what you want with it. As soon as you distribute a binary that is linked to a GPL’ed library that program must follow the GPL licence. If you distribute a binary that is linked to only LGPL’ed libraries you can licence your code however you wish as long as your program doesn’t directly contain any gpl’ed code.
GreyBeard
Does that include runtime versions of games made with Blender?
Do we need to make the source for the game available as part of the runtime is Blender code so under GPL a game made from Blender could be seen as a redevelopment of Blender and therefore required to be open under the licence?
What that article seems to say is that we can’t protect our work…
Either we release the game as a stand alone which is covered by GPL so we must release the source…
OR
We release the player seperately from the .blend file so the .blend file is entirely our work and not under GPL, but can be opened, read and modified by anyone else who possesses Blender!
Am I reading this right?
Either we release the game as a stand alone which is covered by GPL so we must release the source…
OR
We release the player seperately from the .blend file so the .blend file is entirely our work and not under GPL, but can be opened, read and modified by anyone else who possesses Blender!
For what it’s worth I agree with your understanding of the terms. I’m not that familiar with the game engine – is there no way to encript/mark the .blend so it only works with the player but can’t be opened in blender. This would at least stop simple copying although a cracker could easily get around it since he has access to the blender source.
GreyBeard
It seems possible that a compiled stand alone would comprise A) GPL Licence code and B) Original material. I wonder if making the runtime code available seperately would be sufficient to satisfy GPL requirements?
I wonder if making the runtime code available seperately would be sufficient to satisfy GPL requirements?
No, unfortunately not.
GreyBeard
I would be really interested to know if there is a solution to this. I am making a walkthrough of the college I work for to put on our website as a standalone (Download and run, not web plug in) and would’ve expected some sort of protection available, but it seems if I do I violate GPL.
Would you know of some sort of licencable blender runtime compiler that the foundation could make available, or does that violate the tennants of the foundation.
Failing that, could we request some sort of encryption available in later versions of Blender. (Say one password/key for runtime to pass to the player and another for editing or something.)
For others reading this thread, I think Greybeard and I are getting slightly off topic on this thread, so just in case anyone is concerned - this legal stuff we’re going on about is about Interactive Applications (Games, walkthroughs etc) produced in Blender:
Any pictures or animations are completely yours under copyright law.
Would you know of some sort of licencable blender runtime compiler that the foundation could make available, or does that violate the tennants of the foundation.
It’s more about violating the rights of the people that have contributed code than violating the tennants of the foundation. If I were you I would go to blender.org and contact Ton. He may have an old version of the runtime – before it was open sourced – that could be licenced to you. For the newer versions you would have to get permissions from all the contributors (although maybe all the code contributors have already agreed to assign their copyrights to the foundation so dual licensing would be possible).
GreyBeard
Well I don’t have time right now to grab the site link, but I’ll find it later tonight. Lots of good stuff in here now though.
I’ve been a Linux user for quite some time and GreyBeard is most certainly correct. Anyways, I just read this article and it confused me a fairly good bit. Probably lack of sleep. Like I said, I’ll try to find the link later, maybe I was reading this wrong or something.
Is there not a way to make a ‘stub’ launcher that reads your game data from a separate .blend file? I’ve done this before with Macromedia Director, with a tiny executable that just loads up data from a separate file. If this were possible in Blender (no idea if it is or isn’t) you can easily separate your own copyrighted content from the Blender code.
There are non-gpl applications for linux ie: maya, vmware, matlab, mathematica etc. These programs are not released under the gpl and do not contain any gpl’ed code. Linking to some linux libraries is allowed because those libraries are released under a different licence which allows for linking (lgpl).
The data you create with a gpl’ed program is not covered by the gpl. If you write a book with open office, a gpl’ed office suite, the gpl doesn’t apply to the book.
GreyBeard[/quote]
That was my point. Just because a program is released under the GPL, that doesn’t have anything to do with the output of a program – JPEG or book – you are selling the output not the software used for creation.
If you create an electronic manual from Open Office that uses macros, you would be able sell the manual. Why wouldn’t you be able to sell a Blender created game? The ‘engine’ is being included as a convenience and can be downloaded (I suppose it would be courteous to provide a link to Blender with any game distribution).
If you change the code in the game engine to enable it to run your creation, that would cause problems with the GPL.
This is what the Blender Playerdoes. The issue I have isn’t so much copyright over the .blend file, but obfuscation of my work so that there is some sort of physical as well as legal protection.
I agree, but if you had to include a copy of Open Office so that a recipient could run the macros then that would be under GPL.
I’m not discouraged by this thread and will most certainly still create the walkthrough I’m making, but I may have to wrap it in the web plug in at least for now.
I look forward to seeing where this issue end up - any kind of resolution can only be good for the community!
Alright, well back to what I was talking about. Here’s the link: Click Here I just read it again (first time was at 3am. lol.) it looks like the article might be saying it is just about the mesh rights, but more or less the same thing. What’s your take on it?
*Note: It’s number “3)”.