How exactly does the licensing work?

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Wicketd
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How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by Wicketd »

As far as I've gathered, OGRE uses an MIT license, but also that I have to include this license somewhere within the documentation of my products. Considering the MIT license allows free distribution of any kind, doesn't having to include this license with your product disable you to make a commercial product of any kind? I feel I'm overlooking something, especially considering there are commercial products built on OGRE out there, e.g. Torchlight.

Thanks.
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Klaim
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by Klaim »

The license should explicitely tell what it applies to, here Ogre. So the rest of your binaries/code should not be affected by the licence.
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c6burns
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by c6burns »

Obviously, you can't keep the copyright and license in a binary distribution of the code. MIT is permissive and compatible with commercial products.
Copyright (C) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
Pretty self-explanatory as far as these things go.
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Kojack
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by Kojack »

Wicketd wrote:As far as I've gathered, OGRE uses an MIT license, but also that I have to include this license somewhere within the documentation of my products.
It's the mit license that says you have to include a copy of the license, ogre didn't add that as an extra condition (that's what it sounds like you were implying).
As long as you include a copy of the ogre copyright notice somewhere in your final release (in a readme, in the credits like some games do, in a license directory, etc), then everything is fine.
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c6burns
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by c6burns »

I'm no lawyer so I can't say for sure, but with MIT I thought you only have to include a copy of the license if you are distributing the code. Binaries you build don't have to be accompanied by the license. Please correct me if I am wrong!
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by cord »

The MIT license is discussed at length all over the internet. Google is your friend :)

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1463 ... nk-1463095
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c6burns
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by c6burns »

My point was more about the interpretation of the term "Software" in the MIT license. BSD is completely explicit about source and binary distribution, while MIT simply refers to "software and associated documentation files". To me, that is leaving room for interpretation, but again I am not a lawyer. I've never distributed binaries with MIT licensed code ... my experience is more with BSD. I'll ask our lawyer before we distribute, but mainly out of curiosity since I imagine we will drop the license into a txt alongside the binaries just to be safe and fair.

Long story short, you can make commercial software with MIT licensed stuff ... go go go!
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by cord »

Sorry, c6burns, I didn't mean to misunderstand you. I was more replying to the OP, there are some great licensing resources out there.

I agree with you, the best advice is to consult with a lawyer.
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by c6burns »

No worries, I shoulda realized you were replying to OP :)
Wicketd
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Re: How exactly does the licensing work?

Post by Wicketd »

That makes sense. I've misinterpreted the license. Thanks for the responses.
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