License question

[nspired]

Hi all (esp. py'tom I bet!),

License question...

I've taken the entire text of the Ren'Py license and dependency licenses and have appended all of that to my license for a commercial game built on Ren'Py.

The user has to accept / decline the license as part of the install process and the license.txt file is planted on their computer.

I have also put on the intro screen something like: "Built, in part, with Ren'Py" Most likely, giving myself way too much credit ... but hey, at least I made prominent mention of Ren'Py!

Anyway, the question: Is what I did above with the license sufficient?

I also include, in the built-in help the following dialogs:

"Many thanks to Ren'Py for the excellent foundation upon which this game is based."

"Learn more about Ren'Py by visting their websit at..."

[PyTom]

Anyway, the question: Is what I did above with the license sufficient?

Disclaimer: Dammit Jim, I'm a programmer, not a lawyer!

I believe what you did should be enough. The controlling section is section 6 of the LGPL. I think LICENSE.txt covers this by satisfying section 6c of the LGPL. If you want to be 100% sure, you can satisfy sections 6d and 6e by including copies of Ren'Py and renpy-deps on the download site or CD, and linking them from your license.

The only other issue is that the commercial license must permit "modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse
engineering for debugging such modifications." (I believe both of these are allowed by default under copyright, so what's important is that the license does not explicitly exclude them.)

[nspired]

Doc,

When you say "for the customer's own use" do you read this as meaning literally for there own use and not tweaking and then selling? Not sure that is clear but hopefully you'll understand.

I need to go back an look at my license to see that it does not explicitly exclude what you mention...

[PyTom]

Doc,

Not yet, I only have a MS.

When you say "for the customer's own use" do you read this as meaning literally for there own use and not tweaking and then selling? Not sure that is clear but hopefully you'll understand.

From what I understand, this means that I can buy the game and change it myself (for example, I could change the main character's name to Rumpelstiltskin).

I couldn't give my changed version to anyone else, that's redistribution, and that's not allowed.

If I understand it correctly, I could give my changes (separate from your game) to other people, and if they bought your game, they could apply the changes to it.

I think we're rapidly getting into angels-on-pinheads territory here. The important thing is that allowing people to change the game "for the customer's own use" does not let them give other people the game without the other person paying for it.