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reattiva / Urho3D-Blender

Blender to Urho3D mesh exporter
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License conflicts? #92

Open SuperWangKai opened 5 years ago

SuperWangKai commented 5 years ago

I am not an expert on open source license. However, according to https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/72095/license-issues-with-blender-addons -

Regarding 3rd party addons:

Blender also includes the Blender Python API, so every piece of code of the addon that uses some Blender Python API must be also licensed under GNU. This only applies to the addon script files or binaries.

It seems that the souce code of every addon using Blender Python API should be licensed under GPL v2+. which means that Urho3D-Blender should only be licensed under GPL 2.0 or later?

More - https://www.blender.org/about/license/

reattiva commented 5 years ago

You're spot on, thanks. It's like a disease and that's why nobody likes it. I've tampered the license.

SuperWangKai commented 5 years ago

There are compatible license types we can choose, e.g. Apache License, am I right?

1vanK commented 5 years ago

The script is just text. There is not a single line in this text that is source code under GPL license. If user integrate this text to Blender, he himself think about GPL virality. But script can be licensed under "public domain"

reattiva commented 5 years ago

@SuperWangKai, as far as I know, Apache, MIT, public domain and any other sane license are more liberal, so they are not compatible. What Blender could have done was licensing Blender's source code as ''Grand Prix Legends'' and its API as MIT. @1vanK, that text is using Blender's API, it's like using a library and that's when the ''Grand Prix Legends'' kicks in. For example if I write a plain wrapper around all the API calls and I release it under MIT, then somebody can use my script to circumvent Blender's rights, he can release a software which uses Blender's calls without releasing the source code, and I am the one at fault. My point of view, read this "https://www.blender.org/support/faq/" and decide what this script's license is, however when you remove all the Blender's calls then the now useless script is release as public domain.

1vanK commented 5 years ago

Suppose I write a strange school essay. In my essay there is the line "import bpy". Should I release my essay under GPL license? Of course not.

Another example. In some fictional world I have own realisation of Blender and Python licensed under MIT. So I run same scipt using not GPL environment.

So a text file in which there is a string "import bpy" not automatically turns to be licensed GPL.

Any compatible license transform to GPL only at moment when running in GPL environment (or compiled with GPL code). This also applies to wrappers.

As long as the source is distributed as text, it can have any license. But not every license compatible with GPL. Public Domain is compatible.

1vanK commented 5 years ago

Must every linux application be under gpl license? Each application calls functions of OS.