Which Open Source Licenses can address concerns for an Open Source Game Engine?
- by Chris
I am on a team that is looking to open source an engine we are building. It's intended as an engine for Online RPG style games. We're writing it to work on both desktops and android platforms.
I've been over to the OSI http://opensource.org/licenses/category to check out the most common licenses. However, this will be my first time going into an open source project and I wanted to know if the community had some insight into which licenses might be best suited.
Key licensing concerns:
Removing or limiting our liability (most already seem to cover this, but stating for completeness).
We want other developers to be able to take part or all of our project and use it in their own projects with proper accreditation to our project.
Licensing should not hinder someone's ability to quickly use the engine. They should be able to download a release and start using it without needing to wait on licensing issues.
Game content (gfx, sound, etc.) that is not part of the engine should be allowed to be licensed separately. If someone is using our engine, they can retain full copy right of their content, including engine generated data.
Our primary goal is exposure, which is why we're going open source to
start with. Both for the project and for the individuals developing it. Are there any licenses that can require accreditation visible to players?
While I'd put our primary goal as exposure, for licensing the accreditation is less of a concern.
From what I've read through (and have been able to understand) it doesn't seem like any of the licenses cover anything that is produced by the licensed software. Are there any that state this specifically, or does simply not mentioning it leave it open for other licensing?
Are there any other concerns that we should consider?
Has anyone had any issues using any of these licenses?
