Static linking license exclusion considered?

tp

20-08-2009 07:08:59

Just wanted to make a quick question to the developers. Now that Ogre itself has an exclusion for static linking in commercial projects, are you considering adding a similar clause to MyGUI? As justification, I can only offer the same rationale that was used for the decision for the Ogre project.

As you know, this would simply be to make the installation and maintenance of any executable easier. I'm sure the impact on attribution would also be quite minor... People have for ages listed logos of technologies used in projects on loading screens and disk covers just for the cool factor, and I personally would much rather put a logo somewhere because I'm using an open source product that's actually good than because a commercial license requires me to.

Altren

20-08-2009 12:52:50

OGRE was able to avoid static linking LPGL restriction due to double licensing and double licensing was added after some kind of complete rewrite.
So to avoid static linking LGPL rule we need to rewrite MyGUI only for one exclusion, that doesn't looks reasonable.

P.S. And by the way - MyGUI works without OGRE too ;)

tp

20-08-2009 19:53:35

As far as I can tell (please someone correct me if I'm wrong), Ogre went to a new license altogether (one that featured double licensing, as did the one before that) and that was a hassle, since they had to get approval from all people who had contributed to Ogre (hundreds?). I think they had to rewrite the parts where they didn't get that approval or couldn't contact the original developer. Now, they have a contributor license agreement you have to sign that basically lets the Ogre team decide what's best for a contribution someone makes (they effectively own their own copy of it).

The static linking exclusion is much more recent (March 1 this year). To my understanding, it was possible because the current system allows the core team to revise the license conditions (which the old one didn't). The fact that there's double licensing doesn't affect this at all as such, the important point seems to be that the core team is now in control of the license. The Ogre license you pay for allowed static linking from the start, but the new one allows it for everyone (even under LGPL).

I've thought that practically all of MyGUI is from your core team, who you can easily contact at any time to consider a change like this. If you have so many contributors already that you can't do this, I understand perfectly well. I just wanted to make sure there's no confusion here.