[Bf-committers] Re: motion capture blender

[Jean-Michel Smith]

Regarding licensing:

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004 16:22:20 -0500, Matthias for Blender
<blender3d at matthiasm.com> wrote:
> Anyway, I hope the code helps somewhat. I'll be happy to officially
> LGPL it, with the limitation to Blender and directly derived work
> though (which would not harm any other part of Blender, the GPL or
> LGPL).

The GPL explicitly forbids ADDING restrictions, so by adding a clause
"GPLed only for blender and direct derivatives" you actually VIOLATE
the GPL (see fsf.org for details on this).

I gather you don't want your code falling into a competitor's hands. 
If you're concerned about a competitor using or releasing competing
free software, the GPL offers you some protection in that it insures
that said work must be freely available under its terms (which means
you can borrow from your competitor's contributions as well), but it
doesn't prevent your competitor from using the code at all.  If you're
concerned about a competitor (or someone else) taking your code and
using it in a proprietary program, the GPL offers excellent protection
here, while the LGPL offers quite a bit less protection (it is more
akin to a FreeBSD style license in many respects, which is why Richard
Stallman, author of both licenses, discourages its use except in
specific instances).

I don't know how this integrates with Blender's licensing.  You could
dual license under the Blender license (this gives blender.org leeway
to use the code in BLENDER-only value added packages I think) and the
GPL.   You won't be able to restrict it to blender and blender-only
derivatives, but you will restrict it to Free Software projects only
... which goes a long way toward what I *think* you're trying to do,
without violating the license your trying to use ;-).

Of course, by GPLing it you can still sell your code under different
licensing terms, as you do retain full copyright on it.  The only
thing you can't do is "un-GPL" it later.

Hope this helps to clarify things somewhat ... I'd get in touch with
the folks at fsf.org if you really want to dig into the details.

BTW - I agree adding support for such a tool can only be a good thing
for the blender community, so I'm obviuosly hopoing you'll GPL the
code (though of course I do not have said software in my basement
either, so I won't be one to benefit from it directly).

good luck with whatever you choose to do!

Jean