RE: luaODE

["Jerome Vuarand" <jerome.vuarand@...>]

Ivan-Assen Ivanov wrote:
>>     Well, it's within your rights to require people to contribute
>> their modifications to you, after all it's your software. You have to
>> choose what you prize most: lots of people using your software or it
>> getting better all the time. And keep in mind that the LGPL allows
>> the use of the software in closed-source programs.
> 
> This is a discussion that arises periodically in game development
> forums and mailing lists (see, for example, the discussion starting
> from here:  
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.games.devel.sweng/4423 ) and the
> general consensus is that it's NOT OK to use LGPL code in most games,
> for both technical reasons (you have to keep the code outside of your
> game as a DLL, or you have to provide a "link kit" allowing the user
> to re-link your game with another implementation of the LGPL
> library), and for political reasons (big publisher's lawyers are
> likely to freak out when they see it mentioned). It has little to do
> with the willingness of game developers to share their code.       

Yep, I agree with that, usually game developpers wouldn't mind sharing
the code of their games, but it's producers and publishers that own the
code and that want to prevent people from hacking the games. And
sometimes you don't have the choice to publish your modifications to the
code. Say for example I use some open source code on a console game, but
I have to modify it to fit the exotic hardware of the game console. My
non-disclosure agreement with the console manufacturer prevents me from
releasing the modifications because they contain information concerning
the hardware.